


Something to Fear / Someone to Fight

by Benedict_SC



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Post-Steven Universe: The Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2020-11-24 12:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 63,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20907479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benedict_SC/pseuds/Benedict_SC
Summary: It sure was convenient that within moments of Steven's message going out, a random court jester who no one had seen for millennia suddenly had access to a brainwashing scythe and a planet-killing superweapon. Where'd she get that stuff, I wonder? And when Connie and Peridot find out, what are they going to do about it?





	1. Just Let Us Adore Her

**Author's Note:**

> Started writing this before Future started airing, so a couple things are off. And... also a couple things are less off than I expected. There've been minor edits (like using Volleyball's name instead of "Pink Pearl" for consistency), but for what will shortly become obvious reasons, Bluebird doesn't really fit into the chronology- so let's say this is divergent sometime after Future episode 4 but before 5?

It was beginning to grate. 

Laughter. Yellow had taken to it like a fish to water. It almost never _stopped._ That sound- it was of course _adorable,_ or at least it had been when it was Pink. She supposed it would've grown tiresome coming from _her,_ too, if she'd laughed _all_ the time, if she hadn't kept that tacky little thing out of sight most of the time. 

She didn't want to ask Yellow if she _meant_ it. 

She was afraid to find out. The act was _very_ convincing- and if it should turn out not to be an act? If Yellow was indeed _satisfied_ with having this _toy,_ instead of Pink? Could she be trusted to do the right thing, now...? 

"It didn't work," a glum voice beside her said. 

"No," she agreed. 

"So... what now?" 

She turned to Blue. "We try again. Perhaps with Yellow's 'cluster', this time." 

"Mm." 

They sat in silence for a moment, watching Yellow as she egged on the Spinel. It began juggling its own head, something Yellow apparently found funnier than anything else in the universe. The laughter again. 

Blue spoke up again. "How do you imagine we do that? I thought he'd already subverted it." 

She shook her head slightly. "Pacified it. The right kick, perhaps, could spur it into action." 

Blue nodded. 

There was more silence. Between the two of them, anyway. True silence evaded them, ever since they'd brought back the plaything. 

"Any other leads?" Blue asked. 

"Plenty," she replied. "Pink made no shortage of enemies. The difficulty is in _arming_ them. If we try the same trick twice, we might tip our hand." 

Blue was silent. Neither of them needed to say what the consequences of _that_ would be. She would _hate_ them, of course- and even bringing their conquest to a grinding halt again wouldn't suffice to repair that breach. 

"I _did_ hope it would work," Blue mused. "The rejuvenator, at least." 

It hadn't been very likely. The rejuvenator's effects had an unpleasant tendency to wear off unpredictably- and regardless, Pink had performed such _reckless_ experimentation on her own flawless gem. It hadn't been surprising that a factory reset hadn't broken the connection to that biological shell. 

"You'd hoped the injector would fail, then?" 

Blue hesitated, then nodded. "I can see why she liked it, at least. It would have been a shame to destroy- if we'd had her back, we could've made it into a garden planet for her." 

She couldn't say she felt the same. The _smell_ made it difficult to get attached to. 

The injector should have been the failsafe. Leaving it unguarded at the warp depot, ensuring the Spinel would make the right connections... it was child's play to set up, and it should have finished the job. 

What was it? Was it that the toxin had been sitting too long? She'd been assured the substance didn't degrade. And... _no_ gem's healing, not even Pink's, should have been sufficient to counter that volume. 

She should have been the only one left alive- the Spinel would, quite without her prompting, see to it that all of Pink's connections to those "equal beings" were systematically severed. The meat-creatures killed, the Crystal Gems wiped clean, and Pink left all alone but for her _best friend._

And then, of course, they'd have arrived to rescue her from the monster. What a tragedy, that the Earth- that gnarled claw that meant to snatch her away from home- would be so cruelly destroyed by a mad Spinel. But at least, at the end of it all, she would still have a home to go back to- and no reason to leave. 

"Oh, White, why did you not arrive sooner?" she would ask. And she'd tell her the truth, of course- that she'd clearly wanted her space, and watching her every move would have been so _smothering._ She could hardly be blamed for doing exactly what Pink wanted! And she would learn, of course, that to be outside of her protective reach was a recipe for disaster. 

But no. 

No, instead... instead, Pink was _still_ on Earth, _literally_ kissing the dirt those animals walked on. 

"What if... we replaced them?" 

Blue was talking again. What did she mean? 

"Explain." 

"Well, Steven knows that the rejuvenator's effects are supposed to wear off, now. If it happened again, he'd be counting on it. He wouldn't give up." 

"I don't see the connection," she said, pretty sure she saw the connection but allowing Blue to speak her mind. 

"He won't want to believe that the Crystal Gems aren't themselves," she continued. "He'll think he knows the answer- waiting. But if we managed to replace the originals with fresh cuts, that would never work. There'd be nothing to wear off. He'd have to give up eventually." 

Like she thought. "It's a good idea," she began, "but there's a danger that she'd bond to the new ones, too. Subvert them, replace her friends with copies she believes to be the originals- going through a recovery process, perhaps, but still worth clinging to." 

Blue frowned. "There are avenues... if the copies are under orders to sabotage his attempts to befriend them..." 

"Hmph." Her eyes narrowed. "Would you like to make a bet on those odds? Pink, failing to corrupt our servants?" 

Blue let out a sad little laugh. "You're right..." 

"Besides, getting it to work in the first place is... it's risky. To make a swap like that- well, it'd require a careful touch. Close supervision. And if we're too close, Pink might notice what we're doing." 

"Steven," Blue corrected her. 

A derisive snort. "This 'Steven' is a phase. She'll outgrow it soon enough. It's hardly a reason to..." 

...to stop... using her real name. It was important not to start calling her Steven. Because then she'd be getting her way- moreso than she already had. Pink's little tantrum had to stop _somewhere._

Blue clicked her tongue. "If you call him Pink in private, you'll be more likely to slip up and say it to his face. And you know how he'd take that..." 

Slip up? 

By reflex, she turned to Blue and gave her her best #3 smile. The one to remind her what it meant to imply that she could "slip up". Rigid. Leaving the meaning unspoken. 

Blue didn't look impressed. 

"White." 

She let the #3 drop. That... well, Pink hadn't been entirely wrong. Perfection... it was something she still had to remind herself she'd lost. She couldn't get it back if she refused to admit it was missing. "The first step is admitting you have a problem," he'd said. 

She'd said. 

Curse her. This had to stop. She just needed to put things back to normal, that was all. 

And she could take a small bit of comfort in the self-evident fact that- though she may not be _perfect-_ she was still _better_ than everything else in the universe.


	2. Disarmament?

Never. 

_Never!_

She had been _promised!_

She slammed a fist down on the console, directing the automated defenses to fire everything they had at the incoming arm-ada. Disruption beams lanced out, targeting the exhaust ports her Peridot _knew_ were improperly shielded. The polar search pattern encoded into the beam was exactly right for the destabilizer packet to wind its way through the ship's armor and discharge at the bridge- precisely where the captain would be standing. 

Ten of the twelve incoming hands stumbled, momentarily without direction. Their reserve navigators picked up the slack, but not before the subsequent barrage of heavy ordnance slipped past their directed shielding. Two hands, sent spinning, collided in midair and fell to the ground. Another three were driven into a mountainside, the impact disturbing engine integrity and forcing a core shutdown. 

Five down. Nearly half their forces. 

Not nearly enough. 

Two of the ships had maintained course, and were now punching through the outer turret emplacements. How?! Had the captains been out of position? If so, how did they react so quickly? 

The comms buzzed again, carrying a nasal voice. "It's _over,_ Aquamarine! Surrender now!" 

She snarled. Of _course_ they'd sent the human general. The _Lars._ She should've killed the whiny monkey when she'd had the chance. 

...No, at the time, she couldn't have known what would happen. Killing the Lars would've been counter to her mission instructions, and there was no reason _then_ to believe he was a threat. 

Still. 

Still! 

She issued a command to the construction drones. With the infusion of her Aquamarine's power, they could move crystal _considerably_ faster than Homeworld would expect. 

A heavy-duty support beam swung into place in the blink of an eye, and two hands clotheslined themselves on a rampart that was suddenly much sturdier than their instruments had been telling them. Seven down. 

They hadn't seen it coming. They'd _never_ see it coming. 

One more foolishness of her Diamond's regime had been the taboo against fusion. 

It'd taken her some time to see it- of course, fusion was an unpredictable weapon. Gems were grown to exact specifications, born to fill specific roles. Designs were refined over time to produce soldiers who excelled in precisely the niches they needed to excel in, with personalities perfectly-suited to doing their assigned work without hesitation. The result of a cross-type fusion was unpredictable, both in skillset and disposition. Allowing casual fusion between subordinates was a recipe for disharmony that could threaten a carefully-organized operation. 

Lazy thinking. They'd given up on a whole _world_ of tactical possibilities, simply because understanding and cataloguing the variations on fusion was too much of a bother. 

She couldn't _quite_ fault them- the status quo worked well enough, and there was no one in the universe that posed enough of a threat to necessitate an arms race. 

Or there _hadn't_ been. Not until Blue Diamond reneged on her promise. Not until, after two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine years of loyal service, her foremost Aquamarine's three-millennium bonus was unceremoniously _cancelled._

"I repeat! Surrender now!" the Lars demanded, as the four remaining hands dodged support beams and began disgorging Amethyst ground troops. 

She turned on her own comms. "Why should I?!" she demanded. "This planet is _mine!_ Mine by right! A three-thousand-year-old contract!" 

"The contract is void, Aquamarine!" the Lars said. "Planetary conquest is no longer sanctioned by the Diamond Authority!" 

She _knew_ that! Obviously she knew that! Why else would she have turned on her Diamond?! 

The Lars sighed. "Gah... this one's a real pain. I guess it's time to bring out the big guns..." 

There was a sound- something she could recognize as the sound of a gradient warp gate opening, thanks to her great and lovable Peridot component. (The Peridot had been likewise promised the opportunity to build this planet's magisterial palace, and was right there with the Aquamarine when it came to taking what was hers.) 

The warp gate sound was followed by the sound of something soft tumbling onto something hard, and then an "ouch!" 

"Hey, watch it! It's hard to keep my balance when a hundred-odd pounds of Steven climbs out of my head, y'know!" the Lars complained. 

Someone else laughed. It- _Steven_ was here?! 

"Okay, okay. I'll try to do the floaty thing next time," Steven said- it was him. She recognized that voice- the new Pink Diamond. 

The reason she'd had her planet taken away from her. 

For a moment, in her mind's eye, she imagined Pink Diamond shattering into hundreds of tiny pieces. How satisfying that would be! That simpering idiot and his pathetic morality, gone! 

...But no. No, she couldn't have that, could she? It'd be so cathartic, but it would be suicide to try. Even if she won... 

"Aquamarine!" the Steven called out. "You don't need to do this! We don't take over planets anymore!" 

"I KNOW THAT!" she snapped, at the same time the Lars snapped "She knows that!" 

"Huh?" Steven asked. "Wait, what's happening? You didn't really explain..." 

"She _wants_ to take over this planet, Steven. She's rebelling against the Diamond Authority because they were going to let her be some kind of- some kind of _supreme overlord,_ and now they won't let her!" 

That wasn't the title she was angling for- the position was just _Planetary Administrator,_ and they couldn't even let her have _that!_

"What?! That's terrible!" Steven cried. "Rutile, let me see her!" 

"Video hailing initiated," two navigators said at the same time for some reason. 

She accepted the hail. This was the first step- she needed this to go right. 

She had two options. One option was to use her remaining lithoviral injectors to raise an army, empower it through fusion, and fight off the Diamonds altogether, resisting by force. That option... was beginning to look less workable. 

The other option was to get Steven to reverse course on his ridiculous anti-conquest crusade. She'd have to talk to him. 

The monitor sprang to life, and Steven's face appeared. Right away, his eyes went wide. "Wait- you're not Aquamarine!" 

"I _am_ Aquamarine, you insolent-" 

No, don't call him insolent. Be diplomatic. 

"You're- a fusion? What's your name?" he asked, obvious delight on his stupid fat human child face. 

"It's _Aquamarine,"_ she repeated. "We didn't need a new name." 

She'd wanted to be a part of her. Her Peridot. Aquamarine was an old, high-ranking, staggeringly powerful gem. She reported directly to Blue Diamond herself, and she was responsible for the success of hundreds of amazingly productive missions. Being a Peridot, by contrast, was a life of ignominy. Always knowing she could do better, never having the authority to do it. But Aquamarine- Aquamarine _listened_ to her, Aquamarine made her a trusted lieutenant, Aquamarine made it possible for her to do things she could never do on her own. She wanted nothing more than to become a part of _that._

"That's... uh, I've never met anyone like that before... but that's great! I'm happy for you!" Steven said. 

"Spare me," she said. "You're here to take everything away from me, aren't you?" 

"No! No, not at all!" he said. "Being told you're not allowed to achieve your dream... that sounds terrible!" 

...Really? Was this going to be _that_ easy? 

"But..." 

Oh, of course. The false sympathy, then the justifications for walking all over her. 

"...Rutile, can you put Piku on the call?" 

"The call?" 

"The... hailing... connection thingy!" 

"Oh, gotcha." 

The screen split, showing... a view of an identical cockpit. In the captain's chair in _that_ one was... one of the vermin. Looked uncannily like those "mouse" creatures she'd seen in the Earth forest, on that one ill-fated mission to capture My Dad. They infested this planet- but they'd be gone once her lithoviral injectors drained it dry. 

It must've been in the other ship that hadn't reacted to the disruptor attack. Another non-gem captain. It squeaked some kind of pointless unintelligible sound. 

"This is Piku," Steven said. "They live on this planet. Aren't they cute?" 

Piku made a sound that might've been annoyance. 

"I fail to see what's so 'cute' about it," she replied. 

Steven frowned. "Okay, well, that doesn't make any sense, but... that's not the point! If you turn this planet into a kindergaten, Piku and his friends are all going to die!" 

Okay, she needed to take a moment. She _knew_ that, and of course she didn't care if a bunch of rats died off to bring this planet to life. What had _they_ ever done to deserve a planet? Certainly not serve Blue Diamond flawlessly for thousands of years! All _they_ ever did was be _born_ there! 

But she had to _pretend_ to care. Otherwise, Steven wouldn't budge. 

"I see," she began. How to approach this? "Perhaps we could simply evacuate the local population to some _other_ planet. One that isn't _mine."_

Piku squeaked angrily. 

"He says it's _not_ your planet, Aquamarine," Steven said. "Even if Blue agreed to give it to you, it wasn't hers to give. This planet belongs to the [unintelligible squeaking noise]. Uh, I hope I got that right." 

Piku squeaked, less angrily. 

This wasn't working. What could she even say? Steven didn't recognize her claim to this place, even if he thought the broken promise was sad. He'd offer her _something,_ surely, but it wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't be what she _actually wanted._

...But she could fix this. It would take some time, but she could fix him. Whatever malfunction of an idea had gotten into his head, she could get it out. 

Why, she asked herself- _why_ did Steven oppose planetary conquest? 

Well, he'd spent his entire (pitifully short) life on a planet that Homeworld had been attempting to conquer. He'd become obsessively absorbed by the short, trivial lives of the inconsequential creatures that lived there. He meant to preserve the vermin, because _her_ vermin reminded him of _his_ vermin. 

That was where she needed to attack him. Make him stop caring about humanity. Make him _hate_ humanity, maybe? 

Or maybe she could _eliminate_ humanity, and in a hundred years or so he'd eventually forget about it. 

Then, when he gave up on his whole futile quest to suppress the destiny of gemkind, Blue Diamond would be happy to grant her that which she was owed- plus interest. 

A quick check of the assets at her disposal. Yes- they'd suffice. 

She pressed a button on the control console, and then feigned a troubled look at Steven. "I see... I hadn't considered that," she said. 

"What?!" the Lars exclaimed in disbelief- but _his_ belief wasn't what mattered. 

Steven beamed. "I know this is difficult to deal with, but we can definitely find a solution together!" 

"Right," she said, suppressing the urge to mime retching. _"I_ need a planet, but _they_ need _this_ planet. So if we're going to solve this..." 

Steven frowned. "Uh... no, we're- we're not taking over _any_ planets." 

She took a deep breath. She'd been _told_ Steven was unreasonable... but this was- like he'd said- "difficult to deal with". She couldn't stomach the zealotry. 

"Then... I don't understand what solution you can offer me." 

She checked the console. The propulsion pylons were in place, and the geometry had been optimized. Wide arches were opening in the forward camp's fortifications. 

"Well... what is it that you really want?" Steven asked. "Conquering a planet doesn't need to be the only way to get it." 

"Steven-" the Lars tried to interrupt, but the boy was oblivious. 

"What I really want...?" 

She _wanted_ a _planet._ She'd been working towards a planet for _three thousand years._ Didn't he _understand_ that? 

"Well," she said, feigning uncertainty, "perhaps... _somewhere_ to build a palace worthy of my splendor. An asteroid, perhaps?" As if she could realize her designs on an _asteroid._

"An asteroid!" Steven exclaimed, clapping his hands. "We've got those!" 

"Right," she replied, punching in the final set of commands. "I'll take an asteroid, then." 

"Uh, okay," he said, looking a little lost. "Lars, uh- actually, I should ask- Volley? How do we... give someone an asteroid?" 

There was... no response, apparently. 

"Volleyball?" Steven asked, stumbling off-camera to check out the Rutile's console. "Where's Volley?" 

She extruded a sturdy enough handhold and grabbed on. "Oh, don't worry about the paperwork, Steven. I have it handled, so... thanks!" 

And _then_ the entire forward camp uprooted itself from her planet and shot into space at high speed. 

She'd escape from this attack, and they wouldn't pursue- they might find her behavior suspicious, but she'd more or less surrendered. The vermin would have their planet back, and that was all the little pink brat cared about. 

The propulsion pylons, reconfigured from grounding pylons, had sufficient force to erupt from the ground smoothly, carrying with them columns of drilled core, sufficient to later convert to personnel. The floor of the camp bent in two in the middle, forming two slopes that met to form a wedge. The four hand ships, hovering in place in the courtyard, were pushed against that wedge, and were forced to either side, tumbling out of the camp through the arches she'd widened in the walls. (The Amethyst ground troops went the same way.) All four ships were left behind, along with the seven she'd downed in the initial attack. 

...Wait. Something didn't add up. 

Literally, something didn't add up. Four active ships, seven downed... that didn't add up to twelve. One ship was missing. 

A quick check of the systems indicated that the twelfth ship had- somehow, without her noticing- crashed into the vehicle bay. It'd gotten wedged, and was coming along for the ride. Not... ideal. But... scanners indicated no active gem signatures inside, which meant its occupants had been poofed, shattered, or thrown clear. She could handle that cleanup. 

A few minutes into deep space, she'd confirmed there was no pursuit- and so she decided to see what she would find inside her serendipitously-captured arm. 

What was inside was _very useful indeed._


	3. Change of Plans

"You're sure," Connie asked. 

She wasn't really asking for reassurance. Reassurance was, um, kind of out of the question, given the circumstances. The question was just to make her _consider_ whether she was sure. _Then,_ maybe she'd rethink this plan. 

"One hundred percent," Peridot said. So much for that. 

"So... I'm supposed to just... Zelda it back at you?" 

Peridot frowned. "What's that mean?" 

She mimed swinging the sword. "You know, like... I guess you've never played a Zelda game. What about tennis?" 

Peridot snapped her fingers, but she looked unsure. "Sure, like Dennis! Just like Dennis." 

Connie surveyed the area. The boardwalk... if the shot went wide, it'd go out to the ocean, so... well, that wasn't _necessarily_ safe. Was anyone out on a boat? She peered at the horizon, but didn't see anything. 

On the other hand, if she _missed,_ and the shot continued on its trajectory, it'd head straight to Beach Citywalk Fries. It didn't look like there were any gem customers in there, but still... if Peridot was wrong about the gun... 

"I see you looking around," Peridot said, with an accusatory glare. "You're trying to figure out what happens if this goes wrong." 

"Yes?" she replied. "I mean... that's basic safety, right?" 

Peridot scoffed. "It's a _destabilizer._ It's not going to _shatter_ anyone. The worst that can happen is-" 

"Peridot, humans don't _poof!_ What happens if someone gets hit?" 

Peridot shrugged. "Nothing, probably. A destabilizer just unzips the photomaterial microfractures in a gem's physical form. No microfractures, no effect." 

Okay, that was interesting information- she'd need to ask about the terms "photomaterial", "unzips" and "microfractures" at some point- but that wasn't the point. "You know what it does to gems- but you don't know what it does to humans!" 

"I'd be _very_ surprised if-" 

She threw down her sword. "Sometimes we get surprised, Peridot! And I don't want the surprise to be that someone gets hurt!" 

Peridot looked thoughtful- then nodded. That was... kind of impressive, actually. Most people didn't just... think things through and then change their minds, especially not in the middle of an argument. She supposed Peridot had needed to pick up the skill, since Steven- 

"So you want to _test_ it, first." Peridot raised the destabilizer and fired. 

Connie moved, but it was in slow motion. Her hand wasn't even to the hilt of her sword- she shouldn't have dropped it, _stupid-_ by the time her head turned around to see the shot connect with the french fry attendant's face. 

"Gah!" he said, dropping his phone- which bounced off the counter and landed on the boardwalk. "Hey! What was that?! I was in the middle of a blog post!" 

The fry guy- what was his name, Peralto? Pizzaro? Something like that?- headed for the employee exit to go pick up his phone. He looked totally fine, as far as she could tell- there hadn't been any visible effect. The energy pellet seemed to have just... fizzled. He'd probably only dropped the phone because he was startled. 

So she spun back around. "PERIDOT! You can't just- what if he'd- just because he's okay-" 

"Calm _down,_ Connie," she said, looking bored. "I'd already tested it out. Or, a similar model, anyway. I knew he'd be fine." 

That- wait, that wasn't better! "You _tested it out?!_ On who?" 

Peridot made a face. It was- oh my god, it was _Excalibur-face._ Peridot probably didn't even _know_ it was Excalibur-face, but that's totally what it was! 

"I, uh... I mean, I shot Greg a few times..." 

"A _few times?!"_

"Not _recently!_ Just- I mean, listen. It's fine. Destabilizers don't do anything to humans, okay? So don't worry about it!" 

She ran a hand down her face. "Okay, so they don't do anything to humans. What else did you test it on?" 

"What _else?_ You mean, have I tried it on... snakes?" 

"What?" 

"I haven't tried it on snakes. It probably wouldn't have helped, though. They're made of the same sort of material, so it'd likely have dissipated and the snake still would've bitten me." 

What? "What are you talking about?" 

"I don't think your Earth 'venom' has any effect on my physical form, however. The substance appears adapted to take advantage of a sort of circulatory system for oxygenation fluid, which isn't typically a feature of gem biology." 

She took a deep breath. "Look, forget snakes. I mean... what about electronics? What if it hit his phone and it blew up, or it hit the deep-fryer and the whole _store_ blew up?" 

Peridot's expression was blank. "Destabilizers don't contain _explosives._ I told you, they just unzip-" 

Connie groaned. "Peridot, I wasn't trained in gem engineering. I don't know what... _physical process_ is involved in, in 'unzipping' a 'microfracture'. I don't know if that involves... I don't know, some kind of electrical discharge, which could ignite a fuel source, or... or if it... there's all kinds of exotic physical interactions that it could have with human technology!" 

Peridot looked... strangely excited? Her eyes had gone wide, and a smile was starting to creep across her face. 

Connie looked at her funny. "You... you have to know that gems are... _way_ more technologically-advanced than us, right? Most of what you take for granted... our human understanding of physics tells us should be _impossible._ So I don't _know_ what is and isn't dangerous, when it comes to gem weaponry. I wouldn't even be able to _guess."_

The smile was wider, now. Peridot was nodding. 

"So... you're going to need to either explain _why_ you're so confident that these weapons aren't dangerous, _or_ you need to stop testing them around fragile human beings." 

The smile disappeared. "Wait. What exactly is so fragile about humans?" 

"Wh- wait, what?" 

"You're immune to destabilizers, you're made of physical matter that can't poof..." 

Ohhhhh. She... was a space alien. Who didn't understand human biology. 

"Peridot, that- the circulatory system we have, that... if we leak too much of the oxygenation fluid, we _die._" 

Peridot stared at her in horror. "What do you mean, you- what?! How?" 

"We... our brains, those are sort of like our gems-" 

"I know what a _brain_ is, Connie." 

She threw up her hands. "Look, _I_ don't know what you do and don't know about humans! _Apparently_ you don't know that we can bleed to death!" 

Peridot raised an eyebrow. "Hang on. If you run out of oxygenation fluid, what's stopping you from just refueling?" 

"A- a lot of things! If our brains go without oxygen for too long, they just... they decay, really fast. And there's no way to fix them- except, um, I guess Steven's magic can do that, but apart from that... I mean, my mom's a doctor. She's an expert in human biology, and even _she_ doesn't know any way to revive a human without gem magic." 

Peridot stared. "This... this is a _crisis,"_ she said. "Oh my stars, we've been taking you into _active combat_ situations? Where if you got a hole poked in you and we didn't notice for a while, you'd just be _gone?"_

She nodded. "I'm willing to put my life on the line." 

Peridot looked at her in shock. "That's _insane."_

Connie chuckled. "Well, they say love makes you cra-" 

Peridot pulled at her hair. "It's _insane._ We need to do something about this!" 

"About... what?" 

"About this 'bleed to death' thing! There's _got_ to be a way to patch your- your completely inadequate biology!" 

"Well... I mean, I guess-" 

Peridot's eyes went even wider, if that was possible. "Wait. Is _that_ why all the humans I've met are so young? Because- because they only live as long as they can go without getting poofed _once?"_

"Uh... that's part of it, but-" 

"Okay, forget the new destabilizer. We have a new top research priority!" 

Connie grimaced. "You really don't have to-" 

There was suddenly a loud roar, and then space itself tore apart, a void in the air that shone with an impossible, physics-defying light. The hole ripped in space, ringed with pink, disgorged an enormous beast, easily ten times their collective size. 

"Connie!" the boy riding the beast shouted. 

"Steven! You're back!" 

She leapt- and she'd been working on her leap, it was almost enough to get her on top of Lion without having to climb- and threw her arms around him. 

"Wh-whoa! Nice jump!" 

It _was_ a nice jump, she agreed. "Steven, what's been going _on_ out there?" 

"Oh, _man!_ It's been a crazy week. First, we had to go tell Aquamarine to stop taking over a planet, and then I had to help the [unintelligible squeaking noise]s rebuild their sacred temple, and then Lars started a manhunt for missing-" 

"Hey! Steven! Down here!" Peridot snapped. 

Steven, with obvious reluctance, pulled himself away from the hug. "What's up, Peridot?" 

She pointed an accusing finger. "Is it _true_ that humans can suffer permanent deactivation in response to the depletion of their oxygenation fluid, Steven?!" 

Steven stared. Bless him, he didn't have the knack for technobabble. "She's asking if we can bleed to death," she whispered. 

"Oh! Uh, yeah. That's why we invented band-aids!" 

"And _when_ were you planning on telling me this?!" 

Steven looked confused. "Didn't... Garnet explain it to you, after that time with my dad on the barn?" 

Peridot folded her arms. "All that was communicated to _me_ was that such an impact could have snapped one or more of his internal structural supports, inhibiting his mobility for a sustained period of time and making him less effective in the field until the supports could re-fuse. No mention was made of _permanent personal annihilation!"_

This was... really bothering her. Was she upset because she'd almost killed Greg? Even _Greg_ had forgiven her for that. 

"I- sorry, Peridot. I thought you knew," Steven said. 

Peridot scowled. "So let me get this straight. Every single human on this planet could potentially _shatter_ from the sort of wound that would ordinarily just _poof_ someone. You believed that I _knew_ this. And you didn't think it was at _all_ strange that I wasn't working on a solution to the problem?!" 

Steven frowned. "Uh... well-" 

"What _exactly_ did you think was wrong with my head? Were you thinking 'oh, that Peridot, so quirky and self-absorbed, brushing off something so important'? You thought I _knew,_ and I'd decided to spend my time on _meep morps?!"_

Steven laughed nervously. "I mean... I didn't even think about it, really. It's not the end of the world, or anything. It's just... I mean, it's normal for us. We're used to it!" 

Peridot stared for a moment. "This is like... good grief. Is this what it was like for you, when I was following Yellow Diamond's orders to destroy your planet because I was _used to it?"_

Connie frowned. "That's not a fair comparison," she said. 

"Oh, it's not?" Peridot asked. "Both of us were fine with letting the entire population of Earth die, _apparently."_

She could feel Steven shaking, now. "It's not _like_ that!" 

Connie glared at her. "It's not like he _wants_ anyone to die, Peridot! There's nothing he can do!" 

"Oh, yeah?" 

"That's just how it is! You can't just... _fix_ it! That's impossible!" 

"...Impossible?" 

Peridot hopped into the air, and her lid came zipping over. She landed, then hovered into the air to look Connie in the eyes. 

"Most of what I take for granted... your human understanding of physics tells you should be _impossible._ That's what you said, isn't it?" 

That- 

"Well, newsflash! Your human understanding of physics is _obviously_ a big pile of nasty garbage! And now that you've got someone who _actually_ knows how to fix things," she said, pointing at herself, "it _might_ be time to give it another shot, before anyone else gets _killed_ by something as stupid as a _fluid leak!"_

She wasn't... really sure what to say. Peridot had kind of a big head, but did she really think it was possible to... what, cancel the concept of blood? What did she even have in _mind?_

Steven looked a little dazed, but... he gave Peridot a weak smile. "Well... I mean, if you think you can do it... good luck!" 

_"Obviously_ I can do it. I just need to speak to an expert on human biology, to get a sense of the fluid mechanics involved. It shouldn't be _too_ difficult to set up backup solid-state gas routing... with the specifications on the collection interface, I could..." 

She turned to Connie. "Hey! Give me your phone!" 

"Why?" 

"So I can call your mom!" 

She hesitated. A memory surfaced, regarding the last time she'd put her mom on the phone with one of the Crystal Gems. It hadn't... gone... perfectly. 

That said, it'd all worked out fine _then,_ and she was pretty sure literally nothing Peridot could say could be worse than what Garnet had said, so... she dialed the number and handed it over. 

(Yes, she dialed the number. Selecting from a contact list was for people who wanted to forget phone numbers and not be able to call their parents on someone else's phone in an emergency. Safety first.) 

Peridot listened, and then began introducing herself. She was a little concerned by the out-of-context clarification that "no, yes, I, too, have experience with biorepairs", but what was more concerning was Peridot wandering off at high speed. While still carrying her phone. 

"Steven, she's-" 

"Oh, sorry. She can be absent-minded like that. But don't worry! Lion will catch her- c'mon!" 

He gave Lion's mane a double pat to urge him forward. 

Lion yawned. 

"Oh, c'mooooooon!" Steven groaned. "Connie needs her phone back!" 

"She's heading to Little Homeworld, right? Let's just take the Beach City warp, and-" 

She'd have continued explaining her plan to intercept Peridot, except that a van suddenly crashed into a streetlight and a horrifying monster exploded out the back of it.


	4. The Customer Is Always A Fright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (little bit of body horror in this one. don't worry, everything's gonna be fine.)

Eight feet tall, four feet of which was just long, snakelike neck. From that neck hung what was _probably_ a head, though it was the size of a dishwasher- a mop of shaggy white hair concealed most of a face. There was definitely a mouth, though. Hard to miss the mouth, with its rows of enormous, irregularly-sized teeth. Some kind of viscous white drool, faintly glowing, spilled out of its mouth as it growled.

The rest of it was vaguely humanoid- long, thin arms with too many joints folded into accordions, which could probably extend a good eight feet on their own. The thick legs ended in clawed feet.

...And the _weirdest_ thing about it was that it seemed to be wearing the shredded remains of a nice three-piece suit.

Several things happened at once.

Firstly, the monster roared, and punched the ground with its accordion arms. They extended to their full length, which launched it into the air at high speed- his trajectory pointed straight at Steven.

Secondly, Connie went for her fallen sword, kicking it up into the air and snatching it _out_ of the air in a single fluid motion. Pearl had drilled her on that one for _weeks,_ citing the need to recover from being disarmed as quickly as possible.

Thirdly, a balding man with a mane of long shaggy hair tried to scramble out of the nearly-destroyed driver's seat of the van. Steven's dad! He was screaming, and it looked like his leg was stuck.

Steven gasped. "Dad!!" he exclaimed, shortly before the monster landed on him and he threw up his bubble by reflex.

Connie began running. "Steven! I'll get your dad out! You handle the monster!"

She ran forward, but an accordion arm sprang out to grab her. Not a smart move- she slashed overhand, and the severed arm flopped to the ground, oozing more of the glowing white fluid. She kept moving.

(Something wasn't quite right. It'd been a while, but... gem monsters didn't bleed, right? Not even glowy gem blood or anything. Still, she ran.)

She was lining up her sword to cut through the crumpled dashboard that trapped Mr. Universe's leg, when something burst out through the wall of the van and landed in front of her.

This one was more like... some kind of horrible pterosaur, with mottled webbing stretched between its limbs. A long, beaklike maw protruded from a mass of curly black hair that enveloped the thing's upper body, drooling the glow-slime. With its limbs extended, the webbing gave it a circular silhouette. Despite the claws and teeth, she thought it almost looked like... a giant pizza. Wearing, just like the other one, the shredded remains of a black suit.

(Something wasn't right.)

"Connie!" Mr. Universe cried. "You can't- you have to get out of here! I'll be fine!"

"I've got this handled, sir!" she shouted, and parried a claw strike before rolling past and striking the legs from behind. The creature buckled, and she wasted no time in restoring her original stance and cutting through the dashboard.

Mr. Universe tumbled out of the van, but didn't run. "Connie, you gotta... you gotta get away from these things! They... oh, god!"

Roughly a thousand teeth erupted from the driver's seat, as _another_ monster attempted to bite through where Mr. Universe had been a second ago. She couldn't see this new one very well in the darkness.

"Sir, I've trained for this!" Connie objected. "I'll take this thing out in one hit!"

"NO!" Mr. Universe shouted as Connie prepared to plunge her sword into the back of the prone pizza monster. Before her strike could connect, she was tackled to the ground.

Despite Mr. Universe's bulk, she shoved him off and rolled away. "I _told_ you, I'll be fine! You're the one that needs to-"

"You can't kill them!" Mr. Universe cried, getting to his feet. "They're- aaaaaaaAAAAA!"

The pizza monster had gotten to its feet- no, to its wings- and swooped to grab Mr. Universe by the shoulders with its talons. It began carrying him away, and it was out of her range before she could do anything.

A pink blur came whistling through the air, and Steven's shield smacked the monster in the back. It dropped Mr. Universe, who hit the ground with a thud- thankfully not with a crunch. The monster, for its part, spun out of control and hit the dirt. It didn't get up.

She looked over at Steven. He'd thrown the shield- but he hadn't subdued his own monster yet. He'd left himself open by throwing his shield, so he protected himself from a stomp attack with a quick bubble.

The back of the van disgorged yet another monster- this one red and muscled, with an array of glassy black compound eyes encasing its head. As if it were wearing too many sunglasses. It seemed to be humming- and again, it was wearing a shredded suit. Why the suits? What was with the suits?

And why had these things been in Mr. Universe's van?

She itched all over.

(Something wasn't right at _all.)_

Mr. Universe had been carried far enough away that he was probably out of danger- which meant she and Steven no longer needed to split up to accomplish their objectives. She ran for him, hurling her sword past him to embed itself in the leg of the monster about to stomp him again.

Steven rolled his bubble out of the creature's range, and Connie rolled to intercept. The bubble accepted her, and she put her hand in Steven's, and-

* * *

Their leg shot out and tripped the monster as it reeled from being stabbed in the leg. They ducked low and withdrew the sword, re-summoning their shield to accompany it. They dropped into a fighting stance as the monster rallied, and the red one moved to flank, still humming.

And now the accordion-arm monster was humming, too. A strangely familiar tune. Where had they heard it before?

Stevonnie wheeled around as the sound of tearing metal screeched from the side of the van. From the side emerged the tooth monster, now also humming- shorter than the others, its many mouths of protruding teeth mounted on a tiny, stubby body.

A tiny, stubby body wearing a ragged white dress.

(Something was, in fact, deeply deeply wrong.)

And as the three creatures closed in, humming an eerie tune in harmony, Stevonnie put the pieces together.

_♪ Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah... ♪_

Dad wanted Connie to get away. Dad hadn't wanted her to hurt them.

They weren't gem monsters- she noticed, now, they had no visible gems, and they bled and drooled that glowing white ichor.

They were wearing three black suits and a white dress.

They'd been in Dad's van, and tonight he was supposed to be helping set up for the music festival down by the beach.

The festival's main event was scheduled to be a performance by _Sadie Killer and the Suspects._

_♪ Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah ah ah-ah-ahhh... ♪_

"S-Sadie?!" Stevonnie asked, looking at the teeth monster.

It howled. And as distorted and monstrous as it sounded, it was _exactly_ the howl from the end of "I'm A Werewolf So You Can't Make Me Work Holidays".

What... in the world... were they supposed to do?! These things were- they were like corrupted gems, but they were _humans!_ They couldn't just cut them apart, poof them, and then bring them to Rose's spring! And they couldn't kill them, that- it was _Sadie,_ and Jenny (oh my god, Connie had even thought it _looked like a pizza),_ and Buck with the sunglasses, and-

They glanced at the arm they'd cut off from the white-haired accordion monster had fallen. On the ground was a human arm, the white ichor pooling around it beginning to turn red. _Sour Cream's_ arm.

There was a little bit of panic (OH GOD I CUT OFF SOUR CREAM'S ARM!!!), but relief overwhelmed it. The arm had changed back! This could be undone! There was something inside them forcing them into those forms, and when the arm had been cut off, the effect had disappeared. They just needed to... figure out... how!

And they noticed one more thing- they'd itched. All over. Connie a little more than Steven, but both of them. Stevonnie itched, too- and when Sadie had stopped humming to howl, the itching had gotten weaker.

The _humming._ That familiar tune- the Diamonds' ancient song of corruption, slightly altered. Even now, the three of them weren't advancing, weren't attacking- they were standing and humming. Trying to spread the... musical infection! The itching- they'd been trying to turn them into one of them!

...Why hadn't it worked?

...Why hadn't it worked on _Dad?_

It was less effective against Steven, right? Steven was half-gem- Rose's gem must've been doing something to counteract it. But why Connie? Why Greg? What did they have in common that the Suspects didn't?

...No, no time for that. If the corruption was carried by music, that meant they had a plan of action.

They flipped into the air, over Buck's head, and went for the van through the back. There- Jenny's guitar! They grabbed it, and then raised a shield when a red fist followed them into the van. Buck was blocking the exit.

The hole Sadie had chewed in the side! They jumped, bubble out to protect from the jagged edges- and then found that this had been an excellent idea, because they'd jumped into the path of many, many more jagged edges. Sadie Killer bit down on the bubble, popping it- but not before Stevonnie managed to get to their feet and backflip up on top of the crashed van.

"Okay, listen up, guys!" they shouted, pick at the ready. "Your new single isn't going over great with the crowd! Let's play a classic to pump them up again!"

The Jam Buds struck a chord, and- well, it was an electric guitar, and it wasn't plugged in, so it didn't exactly rock them like a hurricane. Still, the humming stopped, the itching stopped, and the Suspects clutched what passed for their heads. Their forms began to tremble, and horrible screeching filled the air.

Stevonnie kept it up. They were shredding- but it wasn't enough! Buck had overcome the discomfort and leapt up to the top of the van with them, swinging fist after fist at the guitar, blows they barely managed to dodge.

"We need a backup band!" they said to themself. "But where...?"

"Steven!" Dad shouted. "Toss me a tambourine!"

"And g-gimme my guitar!"

Stevonnie whirled around, and saw...

Well, it was Dad, but limping and leaning on Dad's shoulder was... Jenny, kind of. Her head was still covered in too much hair, and her skin was mottled, but the beak had shrunk and the webbing was gone. Plus, she was talking. She was wearing Dad's shirt- he'd taken it off to give to her, since apparently her suit hadn't gone back to normal with the rest of her.

"And quick!" she said. "It's still in my head- you gotta keep drowning it out!"

As she said it, a ridge of webbing grew out of her leg, stretching towards her arm. She yelped.

Stevonnie needed to get instruments from inside the van, but they also needed to keep playing, and to protect Dad and Jenny from the rest of the Suspects. So...

* * *

Steven rolled off the roof of the van, keeping his attention on the guitar as he spun around and backpedaled towards his dad.

Connie grabbed her sword and spun in a circle, tracing a slash in the roof. The metal screeched and gave way, and then she landed inside with a crash. She winced and felt her leg, her hand coming away wet. She'd scraped herself on the metal edge- but thankfully, it wasn't too deep. She could keep fighting.

There was a cry of distress from outside. Was everything okay?

"My _van!"_ Mr. Universe wailed.

Oh. "Sorry! We'll fix it!" Connie shouted back. Honestly, Mr. Universe. Clearly they were going to need to do that anyway.

Before any of the Suspects could get inside, she surveyed the van's interior. She grabbed for a tambourine and tossed it out the roof in Steven's direction- but Mr. Universe's acoustic guitar had been smashed- or bitten, or something. What else was left?

Oh, there was a bass. She grabbed that... the keyboard was too big... was there a violin? It was such a mess in there, and she suspected only _half_ of the mess had been because it had recently been inhabited by bloodthirsty monsters.

Whoops, there was Buck at the door, and Sadie at the tooth hole. She kicked the keyboard stand into shape, then vaulted off and out through the roof. If her mom could see how perfectly she'd executed that jump... well, she'd probably be horrified, actually, because of the mortal peril. She... she wouldn't tell her about this one.

* * *

"...You want to talk to Connie?"

The doctor mom woman was babbling something about "Dennis practice". Was that related to that "Dennis racket" she'd incorporated into that representative meep morp she'd constructed? What, were you supposed to practice before using those things? No matter.

"Well, fine, but make it quick. We have larger oceanic lifeforms to fry, Doctor."

She turned around to fly back to Connie, zooming down the hill. What she saw, though, was...

"Aaaaaaa!" she said, not _scared_ or _panicked_ or anything. That had been a _tactical_ aaaaaaa.

The mom on the phone sounded concerned. "Yes, this is still Peridot," she assured her. "The children are, uh..."

She squinted. What... in the _stars...?_

"The children are playing music," she said. Wait, no. Connie was carrying an instrument, but she was actually fending off some kind of horrible tooth beast with... "And playing swords. Sorry, fighting with swords."

She flinched at the volume of the "what" from the receiver. She took a closer look at she neared the scene- oh, _craters,_ was that...?

"Holy cow, they're bleeding! Aaaah, I hope they're not dead! I'll call you back!"

* * *

Mr. Universe had the tambourine. Jenny had her guitar, and Steven had switched over to the bass. For her part... she was holding the line, as all three screamed and tried to get at the performers. She tried to strike with the flat of the blade in time with the music, to act as percussion, but she kept having to hit off-beat to parry their attacks.

Still... it was working! She could see some of Sadie's teeth start to retract, and Buck's array of sunglasses were folding into each other. Jenny was almost entirely human, and Sour Cream's neck was being sucked back into his torso like a noodle. Note by note, they were shrinking.

"♪ And you can't scaaaaaare me, no / I've been behind the register alone! ♪"

"(At lunch rush!)"

"(At brunch rush!)"

"♪ Do you wanna see my manager, punk? ♪"

Sour Cream collapsed. Sour _Scream,_ that would've been a good name for it. If they were naming these things. No, S. Cream. Why was that not already his stage name? They were horror-themed, right?

Buck was almost done- he'd stopped punching, stopped advancing. Almost...!

Then, a problem happened. Sadie Killer howled, and... rather than attack, ran in the opposite direction. Very quickly.

Steven pointed. "She's getting away!"

Mr. Universe stopped playing and started running. "Oh, no...! If she gets into town... this could get out of control!"

Jenny shook. "Greg, don't stop! This monster music- it's still in our heads! If we stop drowning it out..."

He stopped, and got back to the tambourine. Steven kept it up on the bass- Buck seemed to be almost totally human again, and thankfully he'd stayed mostly humanoid- his suit was ruined, but it covered him, at least.

Sour Cream was missing an arm. And bleeding.

A green blur descended on the scene.

"Gaaaaaaaah! Connie! Your mom's on the phone! Also, explain why there's monsters!"

Wait, her mom wanted to talk to her?! This was bad... "Wh- I don't-"

Steven threw Peridot the bass. "Peridot, play this!"

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!" he said, running for Sour Cream. He picked his unconscious body off the ground and ran for the arm, working up some spit for emergency treatment. Peridot, seeing the blood coming from Sour Cream's body, obliged.

Peridot... was not a talented bass player. Peridot's bass playing resembled music the same way a fifty-car pileup on the interstate resembled a Toyota dealership. Still, even bad music seemed to have an effect, and there were no relapses while Steven reattached Sour Cream's arm.

Connie looked around. "We need to catch up to Sadie!" she said. "Mr. Universe, Jenny... and Steven, you should probably stay here and get these two on their feet. Get them instruments!"

Peridot looked confused. "Wait, what does Sadie have to do with anything?"

Connie jumped and grabbed the handle of what Peridot called her Transportation Tray. "I'll explain on the way!"

Peridot lurched before compensating for the additional weight. "Fine," she said, reaching down and handing her her phone. "You explain it to Doctor Mom, then, and I'll listen in."

Well, _this_ wouldn't be fun.


	5. Zombie Apocalypse

Connie didn't have very long to explain anything to Doctor Mom. She'd just been able to get through the basics- that people were turning into monsters, and that they needed to use music to undo it. There had only been a few words to the effect of "no, I swear I'll be okay, I'm immune" before they made contact with the creature. 

"So _that_ thing is Sadie?" Peridot asked her passenger. 

Connie nodded. "If we can knock her out, she should go back to normal, just like Jenny!" 

The Sadie monster was standing in the middle of Dewey Park, humming the corrupting song. Thankfully, civilians seemed to already be clearing the area- its appearance was doing a lot of the work on that front. 

There was a lurch upwards as her ballast fell, and Connie fell on top of not-Sadie. A _crack_ followed, as Connie took measures against landing on a ball of spikes. She put her sword beneath her, landed on the flat of her blade like it was a skateboard, and sent teeth flying. 

"Peridot! I can keep it busy, but I can't deliver a nonlethal blow with this sword!" 

"Roger," she said, assessing the situation. Blunt force trauma, she knew, was capable of breaking those human "bones" that they needed to move around. It could also force sleep, if delivered to the head, but this thing's head was... well, maybe it had a head under there somewhere, but it'd be difficult to access. And she wasn't sure if the new monstrous biology had the same vulnerabilities. 

She _also_ wasn't sure about the relative safety of blunt force trauma- not anymore. The tensile strength of human skin wasn't especially impressive, and she'd seen even _Steven_ bleed after taking too strong a physical blow. Since bleeding was apparently fatal if untreated, she'd need to limit the force she applied, and avoid piercing and cutting damage altogether. 

It was a fairly overconstrained problem, really. In fact, why not... 

"Connie!" she shouted, as the girl rolled out of the way of a multi-chomp. "Why aren't we using music?" 

"We don't have instruments!" she yelled back, smacking the teeth ineffectually with the flat of the blade. 

Really? That was it? 

Peridot pulled up TubeTube and entered "music" into the search bar. Then she selected the #1 trending result, a video simply titled "New Popular Music- MUST LISTEN!", with several million views. She turned the phone's speakers up and let it blast. 

_♪ Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah ah ah-ah-ahhh... ♪_

Connie froze- almost, but not quite, long enough for Sadie to get a chomp off. Her reflexes kicked in just in time to carry her out of the way of the teeth, and she wheeled around on Peridot. "What are you _doing?!_ Turn that off!" 

"You said music cures them!" she protested, pointing at her phone. 

"That's the-" Connie started, and then her eyes went wider. "Peridot! That's the music they're humming! That's what's causing this! What- why are you- where- what?!" 

"What?" she asked. "No, this is just some new popular music from the internet." 

"Turn it o- no, put on something different!" 

The not-Sadie began to regrow some of its lost teeth. 

"F-fine!" Picky, picky. She put on the [number two trending result,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMZHWnwiGQs&ab_channel=DeclanWallace) which featured some jittering robots and a faintly obnoxious synth melody. 

It shuddered, and then began fleeing again, but this time, Connie was ready. She struck out with one leg and tripped it, causing the top-heavy mass of teeth to fall to the ground. It began shrinking, and its attempts to struggle to its feet and continue to flee were foiled by carefully-timed strikes from Steven's knight. It was impressive work. 

Teeth crumbled off and into dust on the grass. Soon enough, Sadie was lying there, the toothy bramble surrounding her head gone. Connie let out a sigh of relief, and began taking deep breaths to counteract the exhaustion her circulatory system had incurred. It really _was_ inefficient, wasn't it? That was something else she'd have to fix. 

Then... Connie perked up, standing very still. 

"What is it?" 

She held up a finger and went "shush". 

"What, no thanks to me for saving the day?" 

"Shush! And turn off the music!" 

Why? "I thought the pizza girl said to keep playing it, or they'd turn back!" She did it, though- her ignorance of basic engineering concepts aside, the human girl's judgment was worth respecting. 

And then she listened for whatever Connie was listening to. 

The sound was that of people screaming in the distance. It came from all directions- and it didn't seem consistent with the screaming that had accompanied people fleeing the park. She'd have expected people to have stopped screaming after reaching a safe distance- after everything Beach City had been through, its residents weren't the type to lose their heads over a threat the local heroes had well in hand. 

Also, the screaming was growing louder, and more of it was appearing over time. 

And what the screaming just barely failed to drown out... was another sound. In fact, it was the sound of... New Popular Music- MUST LISTEN! Not quite the same as it was in the video, though- it was a faint humming, growing louder as more voices (some low and distorted) joined the chorus. 

"Peridot... where did you get that music?" 

It was... "Just... on the internet," she said, realizing. 

Connie's sword clattered to the ground. "It's not just the Suspects," she said, breathless. "It's... anyone who..." 

Anyone who listened to the number one trending music video on TubeTube. A video that already had several million views. 

* * *

_Some time earlier..._

"Newest of jams," Sour Cream said, holding up his phone. 

Buck shuffled over on the floor of the van. "What's this one?" 

_"Obviously_ it's the newest of jams, Buck. Listen to the man!" Jenny giggled and threw a sock at Buck's head. 

"You kids better not be playing with my socks!" Greg said from the driver's seat, having clearly seen them throw one of his socks in the rear-view mirror. 

_♪ Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah... ♪_

Sadie frowned. It didn't sound that great, really. Some sort of experimental choral thing? "Where'd you find this?" 

"On trend," Sour Cream said, shrugging. 

_"This_ is on trend?" Jenny asked, frowning and absently scratching at an itch on the back of her neck. 

"Just went up, looks like," Buck said, peeking over his shades at SC's phone. 

"The Algorithm works in mysterious ways," SC said, nodding sagely. 

"You never know what the kids are gonna be into these days," Greg said. 

"Sir, _we're_ the kids these days," Sadie pointed out. Her head was itching, for some reason. 

Greg laughed. "Just you wait- you're gonna think you're on top of the world, and then the kids _those_ days are gonna get into- what is this, anyway? Ominous Latin chanting?" 

"Nah, chantcore's got a diff vibe," SC mused, scratching at his arm. 

Buck put his sunglasses back on. "I can dig it," he said. "Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah..." 

Sadie ground her teeth. "It's- ugh, I can't stand it, personally. But it's stuck in my head..." 

"Really?" Greg asked. "It's like, three or four notes. Sounds like something you'd hear in church." 

"Chant church. Church," Buck said, putting his sunglasses back on. "Wait." 

Jenny laughed. "You tried, dude." 

"Whatever," he said, putting his sunglasses back on. 

He needed to cut it out with the sunglasses. She wasn't sure why, but it was making her _so mad._ She wanted to scream- but that _song_ was stuck in her head. She tried combining the two. 

"Gah!" Greg said, wincing. "What was _that,_ Sadie?" 

"Uh," Sour Cream said, elbows brushing the floor. "Uh, uh, uh... uh, uh, uh..." 

"Can't _see,_ need a... haircut," Jenny mumbled. 

Greg's eyes in the rearview mirror went wide. 

_♪ Ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah ah ah-ah-ahhh... ♪_

The van started spinning, and the world started spinning, and she ground her teeth and her teeth and her teeth and her teeth... 

* * *

Peridot paced back and forth. 

It's A Wash had been converted into a base of operations against the corrupted human plague. Greg and Steven were rotating with Sadie Killer and the Suspects, their rather crude musical stylings sufficing to keep the monsters at bay. The interior of the vehicle ablution facility had been repurposed as a sickbay for humans who'd suffered injuries while being knocked out by the retrieval forces, and Steven was on call to spit on anyone whose condition seemed to be deteriorating. 

The war effort was, for the time being, succeeding. The recent geological scarring and reconstruction served to form natural barriers to escape, and very few residents had made it past the perimeter. The perimeter was manned primarily by residents of Little Homeworld- the song, whatever it was, didn't seem to have any effect on gems, which meant a peacekeeping force hadn't been very far away. Garnet was leading rescue operations, leveraging her future vision to ensure the gem vanguard refrained from lethal force, and slowly but surely, the tide was turning in Beach City's favor. 

Still, humans outnumbered the gems, and the monsters weren't pushovers in combat. The colossus that had been identified as the human Mr. Smiley was tying up a substantial fraction of the peacekeepers, and a number of threats had been identified that possessed abilities too dangerous to risk approaching. Interior perimeters for containment were being managed by Clinohumite, a new fusion between the resident Padparadscha and a Jasper (not _that_ Jasper). Fusions often exhibited nonstandard powersets, and that one seemed to have a restricted variant of future vision that somehow lent itself well to coordinating defenses. 

"You there! What's the status of retrieval team D?" she snapped at a passing Nephrite. "They haven't reported in!" 

"Their Amethyst was poofed!" the Nephrite replied. "Took a hit from the Grinning Colossus! They're holding position at the self-storage." 

Peridot scowled. "What, we're giving these things _names_ now?" 

"Well- for tactical purposes-" 

"They're people!" Peridot shouted. "His name is 'the human Mr. Smiley', we don't need to give them extra names!" 

"Yessir!" the Nephrite said, saluting. 

While progress in Beach City was slow but sure, the larger situation had spiraled out of control. While New Popular Music- MUST LISTEN, the source of the corruption, had been neutralized as TubeTube itself was taken down, the threat had already progressed to the next stage of its lifecycle, now transmitted by monster voices directly. 

To make matters worse, the solution to the viral video problem was more of a problem than a solution. It was unclear what had taken down TubeTube, but other sites were going off the network one by one. After interrogating Connie and the Fryman human, she'd learned a few things about human data infrastructure- which was, to put it bluntly, a catastrophic mess. Absent Hematite redundancy platoons and natural distributed verification, human data infrastructure most closely resembled a plate of human spaghetti. Individual resources were responsible for managing their own data backups and distribution, and without a tyrannical central authority managing all communications, everything had to be behind layers and layers of cryptographic protections. A system being totally unresponsive was preferable to it being compromised by a hostile actor, and everything seemed to spring forth from that basic principle. She could see the hand of the age-old Condemned Dissident's Dilemma in play. 

If she were to attempt to communicate the central problem with a less detailed analysis, she might simply say... that the human Internet did not react well to having rampaging monsters in its data centers and routing stations. 

If she were to say it so that babies could understand, the problem was that the internet was broken. 

Mostly, anyway. Some network locations were still accessible, and survivors were attempting to restore crucial services- but there was no TubeTube, no Spoofy, no eJams. Devices that already had music saved to their internal memory were usable, but otherwise their options for distributing countermusic were limited. 

One question that was still unanswered, though, was where NPM-ML had _come_ from. The Fryman human had been generating a number of wild hypotheses as to how a piece of music that transformed people into ravenous beasts incapable of using computers could have garnered millions of views and gone to #1 trending on TubeTube- but she and Connie had come to roughly the same conclusion at the same time. 

Because... it indeed didn't make _sense_ that a mutagenic infohazard would be able to spread via the TubeTube architecture. For it to reach #1 trending, it would need to be first listened to, then shared with others, in a chain of transmissions that suffered fewer interruptions than any other video file on the service. How, indeed, had NPM-ML become so popular? It was a deeply confusing conundrum. 

When a problem was deeply confusing, it was a good sign that one of the assumptions behind it was simply wrong. 

She'd asked Connie whether there were other means by which a video file could achieve #1 trending status- and while she at first guessed that some TubeTube executive had been paid off to promote the video by bypassing the algorithm, it didn't take long to conclude that this hypothesis was unnecessarily complicated. NPM-ML was clearly the work of some devious gem engineer, and the thing about devious gem engineers was that simply bypassing those pitiful human excuses for data security protections was by no means beyond them. The video had simply been added to TubeTube's number one spot directly, by what the Fryman human referred to in breathless tones as "a truly leat hacker", whatever that was. 

So doing this hadn't been difficult. At least, not difficult for a hostile gem with access to research on the workings of organic life. This narrowed down the space of possible culprits _somewhat-_ since, after all, gemkind hadn't until recently given a single fart about organic life. Doctor Mom, when quizzed further, expounded on the intractable complexity of human biology- and while Peridot wasn't convinced that the problem was so unsolvable as all _that,_ she _had_ been convinced that engineering a mutagenic virus that spread exclusively by low-resolution audio signals was... difficult to achieve without regular access to human test subjects. 

Further testing, on Connie's suggestion, had confirmed that the stimulus had no visible effect on non-human organic lifeforms, meaning that this had been engineered _specifically_ with humans in mind. And _that,_ then, meant that whoever had done this had access to the only planet in the galaxy containing humans to select a pool of test subjects from. 

(Something about that statement hadn't sat right with Connie, but she hadn't been able to put her finger on it.) 

It'd been a short leap from there to checking the astronomical record. The internet being damaged made this difficult, but luckily there had been an observatory over by Ocean Town (whose new slogan was _No Longer More Apocalyptic Than Everywhere Else)_ which had been staffed entirely by astronomers too nerdy to watch #1 trending music videos at work. Plus, it was too far away from the population center to be targeted by rampaging monsters. Lapis had flown over to interview them- and indeed, they had a record of all recorded extraterrestial arrivals and departures. Cross-referencing it against the flight schedules provided by Homeworld showed no discrepancies- meaning that no rogue gem could've arrived on Earth to conduct human experiments without the Diamond Authority noticing. 

The Diamond Authority weren't worth considering as culprits. They were loyal to Steven, and had dismantled a universal conquest operation for his sake. They wouldn't put him in danger, and furthermore were desperate for his approval. In fact, they'd dispatched a fleet to arrive in two weeks, and they'd been sending footsoldiers through the warps to help with containment. They just needed to hold out long enough for the cavalry to arrive- it was just a question of whether they could pull that off. 

So since access to humans was so limited, and access to humans was necessary to engineer NPM-ML, that left the gems of Earth as potential culprits. A recently-uncorrupted gem who meant to carry on the conquest of Earth in the name of the late Pink Diamond, perhaps? It'd been two years since Rose's Fountain, which... sounded like roughly the sort of timeframe she figured NPM-ML might've taken to engineer. That limited the suspect pool to a few thousand- the gems the Crystal Gems had been able to locate and bubble in the aftermath of the rebellion, nearly all of whom were settled in Little Homeworld and the surrounding area. 

And _that_ narrowed down the suspects even further- because Delmarva wasn't a heavily-populated area. Beach City was a tourist destination, and she could fly from one end to the other in less than a minute. Mysterious disappearances were _noticed_ around here. If they could get to Ocean Town, heal the local constabulary, and check if there had been unsolved disappearances nearby, they could narrow down the suspect pool to the handful of gems who'd moved further afield than Delmarva. 

In the meantime... 

"All RIGHT!" a voice called, accompanying a screech of tires. "We did it!" 

It was Bismuth! She was leaning out the window of a human "food truck", which appeared to be driven by the donut man. The donut man high-fived the- right, there were multiple Fryman humans. The littler one. 

Peridot ran up to the truck. "This is it? The mobile amplifier?" 

The donut man chuckled. "If that's what you want to call it. It's my good old campaign van!" 

"Hot 2 Tot, you mean," the Fryman human said. 

"Right, right. It's all yours, my friend- those days are long behind me," the donut man said wistfully. 

Bismuth reached up into the ceiling of the truck. "See this? It's everything we need, all in one place. Mobility, sound equipment, a power source, and a mount with exactly the right, uh..." 

"Resonant concavity," Peridot finished. "Yes, it looks like this vehicle will suffice. Where's Pearl?" 

"I've got it!" Pearl shouted, running up from behind. She was carrying the payload- a revolution-era Wailing Stone. "Let's hook this up and get out there!" 

"Easy, now," Bismuth laughed. "You checked it over, right?" 

"Of course I checked it over!" Pearl huffed. "No less than fifteen times!" 

Bismuth's eyebrows rose. "Whoa, okay then. I shoulda known you'd go for overkill, haha." 

This was their secret weapon- with this, Beach City could be brought under control, and they could devote their efforts to maintaining stability for the affected and researching a cure. A loud enough musical signal might break some fragile human-produced glass, but the idea was that it would also drown out the noise for more or less the whole town at once- including the human Mr. Smiley. 

"Excellent work, the two of you," Peridot said, making a note on her clipboard app. "With this, we should be able to get the victims to the central warp." 

She made note of the odd disturbance in the donut man's circulatory system as Pearl approached the van. What _was_ that, anyway? She'd seen it happen to Steven frequently (usually when he was around Connie, for whatever reason), so she was pretty sure it wasn't harmful, but... perhaps certain bodily functions depended on altered states of bloodflow? She'd need to make sure the gas exchange system could handle variable delivery in response to... whatever triggers seemed to increase bloodflow to the cranium. 

With that situation in hand, she headed inside, pushing past the dry-rollers that served as the door. They had a few beds, salvaged from some of the more destroyed homes in town, but the slack was being made up by a handful of Amethysts. Though they were all shapeshifted into beds, she recognized one of them as Amethyst. Uh, her Amethyst. Steven's Amethyst? No one's Amethyst? She was her own person? It was difficult, especially when she was surrounded by other Amethysts, since she'd come out late and had never received a facet-cut designation. 

"Heeeeeey, Peri! Didja get the scream machine working?" 

"They're handling the installation now," she said. "It's almost time for you to move out." 

"Cool! Oh, hey, hey! I got one for you!" 

Oh, brother. What was _this_ one going to be? 

Amethyst snickered to herself, and then said "What has- what has four legs, but only one foot?" 

She thought for a moment. What was a foot, again? The- right, the human word for gravity connector. And four legs- that was standard for a number of Earth organisms. There was a name for them as a class- quadrupeds, right. Was there some species that had legs, but all but one leg was a stump? No, probably not, bilateral symmetry was a rule very rarely broken by Earth creatures. And Amethyst wouldn't make the answer be "a cow with three of its feet cut off", that would be overly general- if that were the answer, why not "a horse with three of its feet cut off", or- 

"Oh my _god,"_ one of the bed Amethysts said, as she was lost in thought. 

"Shh! She's gonna get it!" Amethyst insisted. 

-right, no, that was it, wasn't it? There was _another_ obscure Earth anatomical term in play! It could be said that cows and horses had _no_ feet, only _hooves._ If hooves didn't count as feet, then... right, right! "Foot" wasn't just an anatomical term- it was a human unit of measurement roughly equivalent to thirty billion hydrogen diameters! In fact, she'd said "only one foot", so she was referring to some quadruped with hooves- or some other non-foot leg ender- which was only a single foot tall. There had to be something like that, right? Horses and cows weren't it, they were too large- but Earth species were created in these "infant" forms, compact versions that grew over time! But even as infants, cows and horses were too large. What else? Maybe... those smaller things, the cowardly ones that lived in the woods! She'd seen juveniles of those, and- well, they were slightly higher than a foot, but they were already walking around. When they were born... that seemed to fit! 

"Hahahahaha! I got it!" she said, punching her palm. "It's a baby deer!" 

Amethyst's face fell as the other Amethysts started laughing uproariously. 

"Wh- what?! Did I get it wrong?" 

Amethyst looked like she was thinking, for a second. And then.... "Oh my god! That's true! Because- because hooves! But they're small! Hahahahaha!" 

"No, she got it _wrong,_ stupid!" another Amethyst said. "It's a _bed!"_

"What?" That clearly wasn't right. She pointed. "You're all beds _right now,_ and I can tell you don't have feet." 

Amethyst shrugged, which was an unexpected gesture from a bed, causing the man on top to shift uncomfortably. (Something Barriga? A relation of Lars, she was pretty sure.) "No, see- I mean, that was the original joke, because... so, the bottom part of a bed, this sort of... board, where my face is right now? They call that the foot of the bed." 

She folded her arms. "Well, _excuse me_ for not being an expert on beds! I basically never use those things, how should I know the terminology for their anatomy?!" 

Amethyst was laughing a little now. "No, no, it's great! You didn't know, so you couldn't get it, but- ahahaha, a baby deer! You found something that worked any-" 

It was at about that time that all conversation was drowned out by a sound. An earth-shattering sound. The sound of a god driving a fist into the face of the universe. A sound so forceful that no other sound could be _remembered,_ much less heard. All thought was driven from the minds of those present by a single, all-consuming _noise._ A repetitive, droning tone- a tone of madness. A tone that refused to allow a mind any thoughts of its own. A tone that commanded all those who heard it to abandon their rational minds, to give in to the siren song of authority. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**_MAY-OR_**

**_DEW-EY_**

**_MAY-OR_**

**_DEW-EY_**

**_MAY-OR_**

**_DEW-EY_**

**_MAY-_**

As suddenly as it began, the sound ended. The ringing silence was broken by the voice of the donut man. 

"I- I assumed you'd _changed_ it! To, I don't know, a charming little tater tot jingle, or something!" 

"Hot 2 Tot doesn't have a _jingle-"_

"Look, let's just turn down the volume a little..." 

Peridot didn't let out a breath she'd been holding, because she didn't breathe or hold her breath, but she recovered from the shock of the sound and motioned for the Amethysts to follow with their human charges. They'd follow the tater tot van to the warp, with the sound keeping away any monsters, and then take the humans through. 

Through the warp, to Rose's fountain. The one that'd been infused with Diamond-sourced energy for the purposes of curing the corrupted gems. If anything was going to fix the problem, it was this. 

...Wishful thinking had gotten her _this_ far, anyway.


	6. Alien Invasion

The book monster fell backwards into the pool, its pages soaking through and sticking together. The head on the end of the bookmark retracted into the spine, and its form returned to normal. 

Well, _that_ had been a bust. 

"Ohhhh..." Jamie groaned. "I gather from the ache that assaults my every sense, and from the melody still etched into my very soul, that our endeavor has been unsuccessful?" 

"How do you wake up and just _right away_ start talking like that, dude?" Kiki asked, swimming past. 

Jamie closed his eyes and struck a pose. "Oh, it's a rare talent, my dear," he said, before losing his balance in the rosewater and slipping underneath. 

Peridot sighed. The pool _worked,_ sure enough- it suppressed the effects of the corruption- but the earworm song would start right back up again whenever anyone left, it seemed. The pool was large enough to accommodate the citizens of Beach City, but it wasn't large enough to accommodate _all human beings,_ and even if it was, adapting to an aquatic lifestyle would be challenging. They needed a more long-term way to confer immunity. 

As it was, she had a couple ideas. Unfortunately, they didn't scale to the size of the human population, and she'd need to do some testing to see if they were even viable. In the meantime, they'd need to ensure the defensibility of Rose's Fountain and see to the needs of the rescued. 

She rotated her array of phones to face her. Coordinating this had taken a little bit more screen space than her one phone had available to her, so she'd requisitioned a number of additional computing devices from cooperative or unconscious humans. Pearl and Bismuth had gone and reconfigured the Communication Hub for their purposes, so she was able to support multiple video calls to key locations. Little Homeworld operatives were maintaining a perimeter and coaxing approaching human-monsters into the pool, which kept her busy directing troops from camera to camera whenever new threats showed up. It wasn't traditionally Peridot work, but- like most things- she had a knack for it, because she was a brilliant genius. 

"Nephrite 17XB, Ruby 2XA, to the northeastern overlook!" 

"No, it's not mobile, but it could launch a bombardment!" 

"Tell him he can go home when we've fixed the apocalypse, then!" 

"Amethyst 10xA through F, the humans need more 'food' in the western sector!" 

"How should I know?! Ask Garnet!" 

"No, I wasn't talking to you! You stay there, the eagle thing's coming around for another swoop!" 

"Yes, that's perfect. Go reinforce the Jaspers at the thorn barrier!" 

It was moderately exhausting, but the thrill of bossing people around generated enough energy to keep her moving. Also helpful was the fact that she was doing an _excellent_ job, and every threat was currently well under con- 

Several loud explosions went off all over the place. 

As startling as sudden explosions were, she managed to catch a glimpse of the source of one of the explosions- something had fallen from the sky and embedded itself in the ground with extreme force. 

"Wh- what was that?!" Kiki shrieked. 

"Well, of course, it was, er," Jamie stammered, surfacing and looking around in a panic. 

It was a dark blue stone spike, a toothpick the size of a ten-story building. For the speed with which it made impact, it'd caused surprisingly little damage to its surroundings. Which meant... that was post-impact tapered deceleration. A method for landing spacecraft which had the advantage of speed and control, and the disadvantage of forcing you to invest ten times as much material density into the construction of key ship components which couldn't otherwise be insulated by the chronal tapering field. An expensive and inefficient measure not typically employed, since rapid insertion was usually unnecessary given the other advantages of the gem military. 

The spikes, her cameras rotated to show her, had slammed down in an even hexagonal pattern _inside_ the established perimeter. 

This was, to put it lightly, not the work of mindless mutant Earth monsters. This was the work of... who? 

She stashed her comms array and mounted her Transportation Tray, shooting into the air for a bird's-eye view. She didn't know what just happened, but she needed to see what happened nex- 

She took to the air not a moment too soon, because the ground she'd previously been standing on was suddenly crackling with yellow energy. It spread across the surface of the water and a few hundred billion hydrogen diameters up onto shore before it came to a stop. 

_Wide-field destabilizers._ Not supposed to be possible- at least, not without active support from hypothetical gem types Homeworld still hadn't managed to engineer. How had that- 

Oh, no no no. That- every gem inside the perimeter, anyone standing in or even _too close to_ the water, had been poofed. Only the outer ring was left intact, and- 

Arches opened on the spikes, and out poured an army. 

The army was made up of... nothing she recognized. At least, not specifically. They were soldiers, they were wearing blue uniforms, and they were _huge._

One was green and many-legged, a sort of centaur brandishing an oversized battleaxe. One stood fifteen feet tall, a titan with eight arms surrounded by a cloud of hovering drones. Another was encased in layer upon layer of blue armor, four arms tipped in spiked gauntlets. 

More and more like these in a dizzying array of different sizes, pouring out of these slate toothpicks from the sky. And it was when she zoomed in and could see the gems that she could see what they were. 

_Fusions._

The centaur was made out of three Nephrites and what looked like a Topaz. The drone commander seemed like at least three Rubies and a pair of Peridots. There was some tall thing that seemed like mostly Rubies, but it was blue, and she couldn't see whatever other gem was involved. The armored knight was- she'd actually seen that before, judging by its size it was probably two Bismuths and two Amethysts, though the color and the cut of the armor- no, yes, in the shoulder, a Nephrite. And the smaller ground troops that surrounded these fusions were fusions themselves, mostly pairs. 

Chaos erupted. 

The enemy had miscalculated. The _bulk_ of her forces had been on the perimeter, holding the line a short distance from the pool itself. They began charging in, ready to- 

-no, the drone commander gestured with four of her hands and sent a _bolt_ of destablization into a mass of Jaspers, which detonated (the wide-field destabilizer!) and poofed the lot of them instantly. They were _not_ ready to counterattack. 

"SURRENDER," the- whatever it was, the double-Charoite-plus-Nephrite with the armor- shouted. 

_Absolutely not._ She fanned out her comms array and went open mic on all the calls. She summoned up all her fury, and screamed the words she'd always wanted to say to an army following her commands: 

_"GET THEM, YOU FOOLS!"_

Gems were built for war. Carefully-engineered combat protocols were built into the crystalline source of every one, making them fit to fight the instant they were born. You could not describe a gem as being "inexperienced in combat". 

That said, as YOU FOOLS began to GET THEM, it became clear right away that the enemy was inexperienced in combat. 

_Most_ gems had never really fought a war. Wars were for people whose enemies posed a threat to them. The typical gem "war" was a plain and simple conquest, fought without a single real casualty. A planetary injector was deployed, the majority of organic life died off, and a handful of shock troops mopped up the weakened survivors. Subjugating a defenseless and technologically inferior civilization didn't require much cunning. 

The gems of _Earth? They_ had fought in a war. Rose Quartz's rebellion had been the first real war- gem against gem- in tens of thousands of years. They'd held out for years- in part because the leaders of both sides had been the same person, playing both sides to forestall the involvement of the other Diamonds. It wasn't a simple matter of punishing the odd defective rebel- gems were shattered, on both sides. The mightiest weapons of six thousand years ago had been brought to bear, an arms race which ended in presumed-total annihilation for one side. Until then, the gems of Earth had been learning to fight against the forces of Pink Diamond and _win._

The centaur charged into a group of defenders. The Rubies scattered, and its battleaxe swung wide as a squad of Amethysts leapt into the air. They came down on its head, and it fell apart almost immediately into its component parts as they tore its gems out with their bare hands. 

The armored Charoite-thing punched a pair of gray quartz, but they held their forms together just long enough to throw off its balance before poofing- providing an opening for an Agate to blast her in a chink in the armor. She didn't go down immediately, but in stumbling, the Heaven and Earth beetles (weird that everyone still called them that) found an opening to get inside. There was a flash of light (what exactly _did_ those two do?), and shortly thereafter the titan was gone in a poof. 

The smaller ground troops were likewise having a bad time. Garnet was pinballing from fusion to fusion, looking _furious_ as she took them apart with practiced ease. She'd been a fusion for millenia, and these gems... they didn't seem to really know what they were doing. They were using fusion as a weapon, and a weapon they were wielding with all the grace of a human toddler with a sledgehammer- which was probably what made Garnet so upset. 

The drone commander was having more luck, though. She somehow projected a constant destabilizer field around herself, preventing anyone from getting close. Not enough of them had ranged attacks to work with- Pearl had her spear, but she was out with Bismuth working on the hub- and Lapis was out on active rescue. Actual weaponry was thin on the ground in what had until recently been peacetime. 

Something was approaching the drone commander. It- oh, no. 

"Up to me to clean up the mess, huh?" Mr. Smiley said, his features beginning to bulge and twist. Was he- was he going to try and fight them off as a monster? That was a _terrible_ idea, she had to somehow stop- 

"No, Mr. Smiley! I've got this!" 

Connie was a blur. She charged for the drone commander with her blade out, and a handful of drones attempted to swarm her. They were bisected in short order. 

Then the drone commander gestured, and blasted her with a giant destabilizer bolt, dead-on. 

Connie stopped and stumbled. 

_What?_

The bolt hadn't hurt her- she was shrugging it off- but it shouldn't have done _anything._ The forked lines of yellow light that cut across her skin like so many lightning bolts started to recede and fade, and she renewed her charge- straight into the passive destabilizer field that surrounded the drone commander. She winced, but didn't slow down, even as the glowing geometric lines renewed their attempts to paint her in plaid. 

_That_ explained it! Of _course!_ It all made sense now! 

Connie leapt- an impressive high-jump that should have been impossible for a human her size, the product of gem combat training that would put an olympic athlete to shame. Her blade dug into the drone commander's hip, and she hung on as her foe thrashed about in pain. Then she pulled hard, flipping up and catching a foot on the enemy's uniform. She withdrew the sword, pulled herself up _again,_ and this time plunged the sword into the drone commander's chest. 

It wasn't enough. Despite the two deep wounds, the giant fusion was keeping it together- and hands began reaching to tear the nuisance off. 

Peridot acted. She sent her Transportation Tray flying, shifting her comms array to form a seat and letting it catch her own fall. (She accidentally butt-dialed a few people, demonstrating why humans typically did not use a collection of hovering cell phones as chairs.) 

Connie reacted, once again flipping up into the air and withdrawing her sword. She landed on the tray as it passed, and used that platform to leap one final time. 

It wasn't going to be enough. Peridot gave up on the phones, and put all her paramagnetic strength into jerking the Tray _up._

With the extra boost, Connie flew above the fusion's head. She spun in a circle, sunlight glinting off her blade as she bisected a flock of encroaching drones in the air- and then plunged straight down, gravity pushing her blade in a straight line all the way down the front of the titan. 

Peridot hit the water with a splash, and didn't get to see what happened after that. Cell phones peppered the water around her, sparking and shorting out. 

Still, that was the primary threats dealt with! As she surfaced, she- 

-didn't surface. She kept swimming upwards, but the water's surface didn't get any closer. What the... 

...No, the floor was certainly getting further away. But the surface wasn't getting closer? She needed an explanation for this, stat. 

She tried going sideways. And with _that,_ she poked her head out of the rising column of water. It was carrying her above the water's surface, defying gravity and lifting her into the air! That meant Lapis was here to save them! 

Weird way for Lapis to help, though. Why was she- 

The water tightened. 

It began trying to crush her, and only her exceptional crush resistance kept it from being successful. And she could see, stepping out from one of the spikes, the definitely _not_-Lapis fusion which was hydrokinetically crushing her in a giant fist. 

Tall. Not actually _bigger_ than the fifteen-foot drone commander, but skinnier relative to its height. Blue, brandishing a striped cane, swept-back hair and an eyepatch, wearing tiny water wings and a wide visor... 

None of that important. The gems, what were the gems? Something white on its stomach, a Pearl? Something small and blue under one eye, maybe a Sapphire or an Aquamarine- and a Peridot on the neck. Just three, but immensely powerful, with hydrokinetic abilities. That meant the one under the eye was probably an Aquamarine, and- 

"You will submit to the rule of the New Blue," she said, and then the water pressure increased and surpassed her crush resistance and she blacked out.


	7. The Same Wavelength

Demantoid finished reinforcing the wall. Blue Diamond's instructions had been pretty clear, and as far as she could tell, the wall would hold. It had the appropriate striations to channel energy attacks away, and it was solid enough to take plenty of hits from the giant smiling monster confined inside. Soon, the brains would be able to figure out how the big one ticked. 

It'd been a pretty difficult first fight to have as Demantoid. Probably would've been a difficult first fight to have as Topaz and Nephrite, too. They'd had plenty of backup, but that thing had still managed to crack a couple Rubies before they got the scaffolding reinforced. And they were still getting medical set up for- 

"Excellent work," Blue said, from _directly behind her oh my god._ She spun around and saluted. 

"Task complete, my Diamond! Awaiting further assignments, my Diamond!" 

Blue chuckled. That was good! Her response had been pleasing to her Diamond! A big relief, there. She didn't really know her Diamond that well- part of the cost of freedom was not having the assurance that your personality had been designed to be agreeable to your liege. 

"We've already contained the rest of the hostages," Blue said. "There are further construction tasks, but those are pending a design session in the atrium. You are granted downtime." 

Downtime? "Yes, my Diamond! How should I spend my downtime?" 

Blue looked perplexed. "How should I know? The point of downtime is so that I don't have to come up with work for you to do." 

"What?" That didn't make any sense. No work to do? What would she... work on? 

Blue waved a hand dismissively. "Oh- whatever. If you want something to do, just go to the new brig and keep guard over the hostages until I figure out what to do with the water." 

Guard the hostages! Perfect. She saluted, and headed off to the brig. 

"The other way," Blue called, filling her with acute embarrassment. She'd made a _mistake_ in front of her _Diamond!_

She moved with haste, to distance herself from that horrible moment of shame. She would just... try to forget that happened. Forget _what_ happened? Ha ha ha ha! 

She'd helped build the brig a little while ago, before being assigned to contain the human colossus. It was a pretty good brig for what they'd had to work with, and Blue had agreed. They had limited material, most of it raw- recently ripped from the Prime Target. Still, she'd done a good enough job- it'd contain the known cuts, as long as they were kept separate. That was the thing about base gems- thousands of years of carefully-documented procedures for neutralizing and containing them if they went rogue. 

By contrast, the Army of New Blue was founded on _trust._ Not even Blue knew what all the fusions under her command were capable of- if someone were to break ranks, there was no guarantee they wouldn't pull out some unknown fusion power and turn the tide in their favor. Discipline was kept thanks to a common cause, and the knowledge that disobedience would be punished by the rest of the army working together- not just by an enforcer who knew how to shut down exactly the type of gem you were. 

The Crystal Gems of Earth had a few fusions in their ranks, but the Army's numbers had taken them down. Demantoid double-checked the cells containing the Ruby and Sapphire that'd given them some trouble earlier. Together, they'd been nearly unstoppable thanks to a future-vision-powered martial art and force-amplifying gauntlets, but separated, they mainly just looked at each other longingly from across the hall. 

(That'd been Blue's idea- if the fusions' components could see each other in their cells, they wouldn't get desperate to find their partners and try something drastic to escape.) 

Most of the cells had two occupants- a gem, and a human. Saved on space. (There was some issue with bubble storage that she hadn't really been able to follow when Blue explained it.) The cells had been built just below the waterline of the fountain, ensuring the human subjects didn't mutate from the Degeneration Command. There'd been a couple attempts at monster-powered breakouts- the gems hoisting the humans above the healing water so they could transform- but those had proven pretty fruitless, as monsters didn't take well to being held gingerly above water. They'd thrash about, attack their co-conspirator, and fall back into the water where they'd go squishy and powerless again. 

Demantoid raised a seat at the end of the hall, where she had a view of the whole brig. Next to her was a cell she'd built to contain a Peridot- no metals in the walls, pure crystal barrier emitters, no exposed systems to tamper with. 

The human inside was waking up. 

"Gah! Finally!" the Peridot said. "Do you know how long I've had to hold your dumb, porous head above the water?" 

"Wh... what? Where are we?" the human asked. 

"Jail, Connie," Peridot said. "Because we were defeated in detail by an army of conquest maniacs that fell out of the sky! They stuck us in these waterlogged containment units, where we're presumably supposed to sit idle for the next couple millennia." 

The human- Connie- surveyed her surroundings. "The... water. Did they take this stuff from Rose's fountain?" 

"This _is_ Rose's fountain," Peridot snapped. "They built the prison right on top of us. It seems they intend to convert this place into their new base of operations." 

Connie looked confused. "Wait. So... I got knocked out by that water tentacle-" 

"Is that what happened? I saw you take out the fusion with the flying drones, but I got poofed before I could make a subsequent field analysis." 

Connie nodded. "There was a gem that controlled water- like Lapis, but taller. I tried charging her, but she just... drowned me, I thought. But I'm alive?" 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Peridot said, waving a hand dismissively. "I made sure to keep your head above the water where it could breathe." 

"...How did you know to do that? Did my mom tell you about the respiratory system?" 

The Peridot looked uncomfortable. "Er. Well, a little. That, uh... you were underwater for a while and hadn't regained consciousness, so... I theorized." 

Connie's eyes went wide. "Wait, a while? How long is a while?" 

"Longer than I would assume your body is supposed to go without oxygen, I would guess," Peridot said, nervously playing with her fingers. "Yellowtail there walked me through compressing your torso to expel the excess fluid." 

Connie looked over at the opposite cell Peridot was pointing at, which contained a bored-looking Jasper and a stout, bearded human in some kind of bright yellow uniform. He mumbled something completely incomprehensible and waved at Connie. 

Connie elected not to ask about that, and started feeling at her head. "Oh my god. Do I have brain damage? How long-" 

"It's Rose's fountain, Connie. This stuff is so chock full of experimental Diamond-powered healing exotech, you probably could've slept down there indefinitely. But _I_ need you _awake."_

Connie let out a deep breath. "Okay. So- where's Steven? How are we getting out of here?" 

Ha. That was funny. Steven was in a high-security cell, and more importantly: they weren't getting out of there. That wasn't the point of a brig. If they were supposed to get out, it would've been called a... room... for... escaping? Some kind of escape-room? 

Peridot seemed to think it was funny too. "Well, before we talk about escaping, I think we should talk about something I figured out." 

Connie looked skeptical. "What's that?" 

"Well... you ever wonder why you're immune to New Popular Music?" 

Wait, what? The human was immune to the Degeneration Command? That... Blue would probably want to know about that. Demantoid began listening intently. 

Connie frowned. "Yyyyyyes?" 

Peridot clapped her hands. "Well, good news! You're about to find out! Pay attention, class, because Professor Peridot's biology class is about to begin!" 

Connie didn't look impressed. "Peridot, you learned that humans need blood to survive _today._ I don't know if you're qualified to be teaching a biology-" 

"Mineralogy, then! Gem biology! See, unlike _you_ floppy bags of natural selection, us _gems_ were deliberately designed by brilliant gemetic engineers, and _that_ means _we_ have _documentation!_ Documentation which, naturally, I've been over once or twice." 

Demantoid hadn't known human eyes _could_ go that wide. Little stars reflected in them and everything. 

"Now, let's start with..." Peridot started, and then looked around in confusion. "...Hm. We don't have a..." 

"Don't have a what?" Connie asked. 

"Hey! You there! Guard! You've got extrusion access- can we can a blackboard and some chalk?" 

Asking a guard to give a prisoner an arbitrary object on request? Did she think she was born yesterday, or something? 

...Well, she _had_ in fact been born yesterday, but Topaz and Nephrite had been born a _week_ ago, so Demantoid was too smart to fall for any tricks. Which was all well and good, but _also_ she couldn't think of any escape tricks Peridot could pull with a blackboard and chalk, _plus_ it was in Blue's interest to have the Peridot explain the Connie human's Degeneration immunity. 

"Sure," she said, and slid a vein of slate out of the ground. The chalk was a little trickier- she didn't have any raw, but the nearest pylon had Earth access, and she was able to find a small deposit and extract some cylinders. She put a inert crystal frame around the slate, and threw on a couple wheels... the little touches mattered. She sent the blackboard and chalk into the floor, and then extruded it back out into the cell. If Peridot had thought she'd put down the barrier for that, her scheme had been foiled. 

Peridot didn't seem disappointed, though- in fact, she looked quite pleased with the boon. She said "wow, thanks" in a really sarcastic tone, though- which was fair, given that she was still a prisoner. 

Green fingers flew across the blackboard, and a diagram appeared in white chalk. 

"This," Peridot said, pointing at a drawing of a gem, "is a gem. You already know this, but our gems are our actual physical forms. Unlike humans, the bodies we use to navigate the world are projections. They don't contain any 'blood' or 'bones' or 'vital organs'. Everything is centralized to a single, super-durable main control unit." 

"Okay," Connie said, nodding. She didn't seem surprised. 

Peridot pointed to the humanoid outline around the gem. "Now, the bipedal projection currently in fashion is not _entirely_ an arbitrary illusion projected by the gem. You're aware that gems can shapeshift- you hang around Amethyst, you know all about that- but what she does _is_ shapeshifting- the shifting of _her_ shape into a _different_ shape. A gem's default form- while it is of course prone to change under certain circumstances," she said, gesturing at her pointed visor, "has certain fixed elements." 

"Fixed elements?" 

"Specialized, newer-model gems like myself- we tend to have more of these fixed elements than older models. Think of our physical form as... a 3D character model in one of your human gamers." 

"Games." 

"Whatever." 

"How do you know enough about games to draw an analogy involving character models, but not-" 

"I said whatever!!" Peridot barked. "Now, in a gamer-" 

"You're doing this on purpose." 

"Total slander. So in a primitive human _gamer,_ a character model is defined by a set of vertices and polygons, right? And it'll often have a skeleton, another set of points and lines with associated data. This data defines the shape of the character, which the rendering engine translates into the virtual object you see in the world." 

"I'm following." 

"Right. Now, in one of your backwards human 'videoed gamers', you-" 

_"Peridot."_

"-in your simplistic, primitive, ugly, videoed-gamer simulations for babies, transformations to the character model- for example, Big Head Mode- involve a mathematical transformation on the underlying data. The vertices need to be manipulated to produce the desired effect. As a consequence, the difficulty of transforming the shape of the model without causing graphical glitches-" 

"-scales with the level of detail in the character model!" Connie finishes. "That's why you can't shapeshift! You have more 'fixed elements', your character model is more complicated, so it takes more effort for you to change your form into something else!" 

Wait, what? What was she talking about now? 

Peridot blinked. "Uh. That's- that's right. I... was _sure_ I was going to have to phrase that a dozen different ways for the average human intellect to grasp the concept." 

Connie grinned and tapped her forehead. "Please. You're not dealing with the 'average human intellect', Peridot. You're dealing with _me."_

Peridot's face twisted up in a sadistic grin. "Oh? Little Connie Maheswaran is getting _cocky,_ is she? She thinks she can keep up with the galaxy's most brilliant engineer, now?" 

"Ha! Who's cocky now?" 

"The virtue of arrogance alone isn't going to get you through this, _foolish human!"_

The two of them stopped to laugh their heads off for a moment. Demantoid sighed and waited for them to get back to explaining. 

"So," Peridot said, picking up her chalk. "Now that you understand that, let's talk about _fusion."_

She took the chalk to the blackboard again, producing two stretched-out humanoid figures. Then she segmented the figures, and drew some arrows between them- the bodies cut apart into layers, moving to interleave with each other. "Fusion, obviously, is when two gems work together to synchronize their physical forms into a single form. Like shapeshifting, this involves reshaping the model to function differently- taking the photomaterial, unzipping the base form, and reshaping it into a new form- in this case, one half of the new form. _Unlike_ shapeshifting, however, this isn't a manual process- a gem is grown with reflexive routines for unzipping her own photomaterial and reconfiguring it to work with the unzipped photomaterial of the partner gem." 

Connie studied the diagram and nodded. "So... it's like taking two bionicles, and using the parts to construct a bigger, cooler bionicle. Except the bionicles themselves sort of know how to do that automatically." 

Peridot shrugged. "I don't know what a bionicle is, but you're going to have to explain that to me later." 

"Oh my god. Peridot. Bionicles are-" 

_"Later._ Right now, you get the idea. A gem's physical form is defined by a complex set of data stored in the gem, and a fusion is a superstructure constructed from transformations of two datasets." 

"Got it," Connie said, which didn't make any sense because _she_ was just a _human,_ and how could a human understand all that gobbledygook if _Demantoid_ couldn't? 

Peridot then drew another figure, with a gem in the center, and then drew forking lines radiating out from the gem. "Now, you've probably seen these lines before, when Steven tanks a hit from a destabilizer. Glowing cracks all over the surface." 

Connie nods. "And those are...?" 

"Those are microfractures in the photomaterial of a gem's physical form. The data that defines a form- delineations in that data are reflected in the photomaterial it generates. They're seams, much like the edges of the polygons on a primitive video-entertainment gamerzoid model." 

Connie sighed, but nodded. "So... a destabilizer, what it's doing is... it's ripping your form apart at the seams? The 'microfractures' are a sort of map of how you're constructed, and destabilizers follow that map and tear it apart at the joints?" 

What? 

"Exactly," Peridot said. "The result is supposed to be just... poofing. The physical form loses cohesion, and the gem needs to reconstitute it. Except... you've seen Steven take those hits. The destabilizer effect is slower, and it doesn't actually rip him apart. His physical form has those photomaterial microfractures- but it's _not photomatter._ It's... gross, physical human body meat. It's held together by strong chemical bonds, not by the paraphotonic effect. So the energy designed to disrupt the paraphotonic effect..." 

Connie nodded along. "It follows the map written into his body, but it can't actually pull anything apart. So we see the seams, but the seams aren't as weak as they are in a gem's form." 

Peridot harrumphed. "Well, I wouldn't say _weak-_ accessible, maybe. Mutable. But yes. And now you understand why it was totally safe to shoot Ronaldo with the destabilizer." 

"I- wh- I mean, _no,_ it was still risky for all those other reasons- but okay, I get it," Connie said. "Normal human, no fractures, the... paraphotonic effect doesn't apply at all. So- we didn't see those Tron lines on him when he got shot." 

Peridot nodded. "So... now that you know this, what doesn't make any sense?" 

Uh, everything? What in the world were they talking about in there? She lost track somewhere around "character model". 

Connie stopped to think. Peridot started to talk, but Connie shushed her- she wanted to figure it out herself. It took her... not as long as it should have. 

"So... wait. How is it even possible for Steven to fuse?" Connie asked. "His body- it's physical matter, right? If destabilizers can't, um, unzip his physical form, then how does his _own_ gem do it?" 

Peridot looked ecstatic. "You're close! But the answer to that is easy: Diamond exotech is such a load of total nonsense, you might as well call it magic. They're crammed with so many unspeakable superweapons that we can't reverse-engineer and even _they_ don't really understand... whatever Rose Quartz did to her gem that let her integrate it into a human child, it _had_ to mean mapping his physical body. Now, think about that! Think about how impossible that should be!" 

Connie had a look of dawning realization, one Demantoid _wished_ she was having right about now. "So... her gem, her- her 'exotech', her magic, was able to somehow... not only integrate with a totally alien species with incredibly complicated alien biology... but for Steven to be able to fuse, her gem had to be able to... map out the body completely, and- and _convert_ it, convert it into- a data specification! A set of instructions for how to assemble a human body, out of materials a gem wasn't even designed to be able to manipulate!" 

_"Exactly!"_ Peridot breathed. "It goes against everything we know about gems! You'd think it would take specialized machinery and advanced knowledge to map, unzip, and re-form an alien body made out of physical matter, right? But no- it just works! It worked for Steven, even when he had no control over his powers. He was able to..." 

_"Form Stevonnie!"_ they both shouted at the same time. 

"Oh my god," Connie said, apparently realizing _something_ that was totally going over her head. "Oh my god. Wait, so, I..." 

Peridot snapped her fingers. "When you fused, Steven's gem had to map, disassemble, and _reassemble_ your body. Even after all that meat- your brain, blood, vital organs- was totally scrambled around and used to form a totally new human being! Steven's gem isn't just able to map and manipulate its _host-_ it can map _any human._ Maybe even any biological creature, we should have him test that... I wonder if he could form Stevion?" 

Connie was staring at her hands. "Wait. So..." 

Peridot grinned. "Right. I suspected it when you and Greg were the only ones unaffected by the music- there was a commonality there, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't about to shoot him with a destabilizer again to find out, not after..." 

Connie's eyes widened. "Steg." 

"That's the thing," Peridot said, grabbing Connie's hands in hers. "You'd fused with Steven, and you were immune to the effect that was trying to unzip and reconfigure your _physical_ forms. Then I saw it- when you were fighting the drone commander, the destabilizer field affected you the same way it did Steven! It stood to reason that the lingering photomaterial fracture map in your physical forms-" 

"-was enforcing those forms upon us! The map was interfering with the competing process, that's why I itched-" 

"-somehow, even without Steven's gem to _use_ the map to do anything! Implying there's either some kind of miniature gem subagent lingering inside you, or-" 

"-or the fracture map itself might just be forcing the competing process to get its wires crossed. Or-" 

"-either way, that means the map is a _complete instruction set._ It doesn't need the Pink Diamond gem to remember anything! And with a complete instruction set for your physical form written into you..." 

Demantoid stomped the ground, sending a resounding boom up and down the hall. "WHAT," she demanded, "are you two TALKING about?!" 

Connie and Peridot looked to each other, something unspoken being said between them. Connie looked at her hands, the hands Peridot was holding, and then Peridot looked into her eyes, and their gazes met, and... whatever it was they were thinking, it was clear they were both thinking the exact. Same. Thing. 

Demantoid stomped again. "WELL?" she asked. "Tell me what-" 

There was a blinding flash of light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This chapter is the reason I wrote the fic.)


	8. Which Superhero Are You? Click Here To Find Out Now!

She was fearless. 

Hm. Why was that? 

What were the contributing factors? Peridot could speak her mind without worrying about how it would come across. She never second-guessed herself. She could change her mind- that was important, to adapt to changing situations and changing knowledge- but having reached a conclusion, she never doubted her right to act on it. Yet faced with overwhelming opposition, she knew how to admit defeat. Faced with challenges, she would decide, decide, and decide again. 

Connie was a storybook hero. The hero always wins- on reflection, she knew that wasn't true, but it was that subconscious background assumption that let her throw herself into danger over and over again. Once committed to a course of action, she would see victory on the other side of adversity and run full-tilt towards it, ready to push aside any obstacles. Though it could take her time to decide what it was she ought to do, she would do it even if it looked impossible. 

Her? In possession of both powers, it would seem. High acceleration, high top speed. 

"...That's really not supposed to be possible," the fusion guard outside said, staring in shock. 

She cocked an eyebrow and grinned. "You really weren't paying attention, were you?" 

"That's-" 

The guard would call for reinforcements as soon as possible, if she had any sense. They only had a few moments to figure out what to do. 

What was her immediate objective? To escape the cell and- no. Whatever ways there might be to escape the cell, they'd likely take time to discover or put into action. Her _immediate_ objective was to silence the guard, buy time to open up avenues of escape. 

What were the resources at her disposal? Not all that much- the cell was empty save for two feet of healing fountain water. Her primary resource was _herself._ Fusions were more powerful than the sum of their parts. While the lack of metallic objects posed an obstacle for Peridot, and Connie had no powers of her own, together they were likely to have manifested some additional ability. She could feel _something,_ something that felt different from Peridot's paramagnetic abilities, but she wasn't totally sure how to use it yet. 

How could she use the resources at her disposal to accomplish her objective? Silencing the guard by force wasn't really an option unless she figured out her new power quickly, since accomplishing anything against a prison guard by force was exactly what a prison cell was designed to prevent. All she had to penetrate the barrier with was her voice, at least until she figured something else out. 

"-not fair," the guard finished. 

Oh. There hadn't been a pause there, had there? She'd just been thinking incredibly quickly. _That_ was a potentially useful asset. The time restrictions on _figuring out solutions_ were looser. So maybe she _could_ spare the time to figure out her new fusion power. 

And maybe cope with how crazy it was to be an _entirely new person_ who hadn't existed until just now, made of of two people (one of whom had never fused before) who temporarily didn't exist. Take stock of the ramifications of her coming into existence with goals and feelings and patterns of behavior that were inherited from, derived from- 

"You were spouting nonsense about-" 

-okay, no, coming to terms with a totally pointless existential crisis was _not_ a great use of mental resources. Problem solving now, philosophy later. 

The power. What was the new power? Something that buzzed on the surface of her skin. It felt like- well, no, that didn't make sense. _She_ wasn't made of metal, so there was no reason her paramagnetic sense ought to be reacting to her own physical form. Unless- 

_-oh._ That made sense! Of course! Her physical form was a combination of phase 5 alignment-locked photomaterial, and a grab bag of common chemical elements- _including_ trace metals! In fact, her bones- she had bones, she could feel her own bones, _that_ was weird- were full of calcium, and Connie's blood had been full of _iron._ Though there wasn't enough of it to extrude and use as a tool... no, wait! If she brought those materials into alignment with the boundary photomaterial, she could jump the alignment lock to the aligned material! Since she had control over _both,_ she could match one to the properties of the other, and... 

"-fractures, and models, and-" 

Yes, yes! It was _easy!_ That specific realignment was something her gem supported, something the gestalt core knew how to do! It barely took a thought, and her boundary photomaterial realigned to match iron microlattice anchors distributed throughout the skin! She watched it shift and turn gray and shiny- holy cow, she was like _Colossus!_ She was an X-Man! Except also Magneto, actually! That was _so cool!_

"-none of it made any- hey, what the-" 

That quip questioning the guard's attentiveness had been surprisingly effective in keeping her distracted from calling in the incident, but it was about to wear off. Metal skin was all well and good, but armor wasn't what she needed right now. She needed force to break out of the cell! There had to be some way to leverage this new ability to generate- 

-oh, wait. Duh. If her skin was made of metal, and she could telekinetically- paramagnetically, she corrected herself, and then decided no, telekinetically was more aesthetic- control metal, then, well... 

She lifted _herself into the air eeeeeeeeeeee this was the coolest!_ She wasn't Colossus- she was the _Silver Surfer!_ Except, without a board. She didn't need the Transportation Tray, but- she figured it was worth finding wherever they'd locked it up, just to complete the look. Plus, it could misdirect enemies, making them think they could shoot her out of the air by taking out the board! Yes, that was a good plan. 

"-heck are you-" 

Well, a good plan for later, anyway. Right now, she needed to shut up the guard and get out of the cell. This was a problem, because she'd acquired _armor_ and _mobility,_ but not _firepower._ And that barrier, well, it wasn't messing around. It looked state-of-the-art, the kind of stuff that had been in development before Peridot had been assigned to Earth. Whoever put it in was on the cutting edge- probably a new facet of Peridot, if she had to guess. But how had a Peridot raised a fusion army- and why? 

Wait, that wasn't important right now. The important part was- there was state-of-the-art barrier tech between her and the guard. She didn't have the kind of force needed to breach a barrier like that... 

So what were the alternatives? Did she _need_ to breach the barrier? How about just the cell itself? Humans had a hilarious tendency to build elaborate locking mechanisms, both digital and analog, which were trivially circumvented just by going through the wall, not the door. The wall here was solid construction crystal, but... not actually that thick. It didn't need to be, not to contain individual gems. They'd gone to the trouble of splitting up fusions, not just imprisoning them, which meant that they were probably constrained by material resources. That wall... 

"-doing, you can _fly?_ Crap, I should-" 

She rammed into the wall full-force, but though the cell shook, the wall held firm. She needed to focus the impact, apply force to a single point, or a single line. She needed her _sword._

...or did she? She could make her skin into metal, gems could shapeshift... well, neither Connie nor Peridot had any natural aptitude for it, but maybe. Maybe... right, using her paramagnetics to sense the structure and break alignment-locking on the metallized photomaterial, she could... aaaaaa! She could _turn her arm into a sword!_ She wasn't the Silver Surfer- she was the _frickin' Terminator!_

"-call for back-" 

WHOOSH as she threw herself backwards. CLANG as she dropped to the floor to get traction. CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG as she dashed full-tilt at the wall, using her enhanced strength in combination with her metallikinesis (yes, fine, that was a good compromise name) to build up as much speed as possible before leaping. As she leapt- she realized that no, a sword wasn't appropriate for breaking through rock. No, _especially_ not while she was a living gattai super-robot with cool star-shaped shades fighting back against aliens who wanted to wipe out humanity. 

"-up, or someth-" the guard said, before there was a deafening CRACK and a fusion came busting through the prison with her drill. 

Crystal came crashing down, and a little bit too late, she realized that the noise she was making would _probably_ draw more attention than the guard calling for help. Whoops. 

Also, the guard had reflexively summoned her weapon- a hammer, unfortunately. Her metal armor was thin, and wouldn't do much against blunt impacts. She'd have to dodge- though that wasn't going to be too difficult with her enhanced processing speed. 

The hammer came swinging for her as she charged, a horizontal arc aimed at her head. She ducked low, losing her footing and compensating with metallikinesis. The stance she was running in was so low that any human would be toppling over. 

The guard reacted surprisingly quickly, though- the hammer's momentum seemed to disappear as soon as it missed. A fusion power, probably. It stopped, and began swinging around in a new arc, up and straight down. There was no dodging that if she stayed on her current course, but her legs weren't positioned to push her any direction but forward. Instead, she used her power to throw herself to the side. 

Again, the guard reacted faster than she should've been able to with that heavy hammer. Some kind of momentum-neutralizing effect on her weapon, allowing her to instantly recover from heavy swings that should've left openings. Charging in close kept forcing her to throw herself out of a sudden new line of fire. 

She dodged a couple more brutal hammer swipes before she got the timing down. There was a little window between when she dodged the hit, and when the guard's reflexes caught up with that fact. That was when she could grab the hammer- and she did, pretending to be hit as she metallikinetically threw herself through the air to match the hammer's arc. 

_That_ confused the guard a little bit longer, her eyes telling her the attack had connected but her sense of touch telling her there hadn't been an impact. In that window, she applied torque, spinning around and yanking the hammer out of the guard's hand. 

The guard dismissed the weapon and swiftly re-summoned it, but that was plenty of delay for her to dart in with one of Pearl's finishing moves and stab a neat hole through her with a sworded arm. 

Two gems hit the floor with a poof, and she bubbled them immediately. They'd go... to the barn, probably? Hopefully to the barn, and not to Connie's parents' house. She vaguely recalled Stevonnie's bubbles going to the temple, but she didn't recall having made a conscious choice about it. The general rule was that it targeted the most detailed spatial map designated as "safe" according to some submental heuristics. Passive spatial mapping was a gem thing, so even if Connie was familiar with her own home and considered it safe, the data format of her memories probably wouldn't be identified as a valid target. Though, given what she knew, she'd expect Steven's bubbles to target his own loft, not the temple bubble storage, so she was missing a piece somewh- 

Loud footsteps were approaching. Whoops. She took off in the other direction, down the brig hallway. She flew past some cells containing some of her allies, but it probably wasn't worth the time to break them out while she was being chased. 

"HII'LLBERIGHTBACKGOTTAFINDSTEVEN," she said as she passed Ruby and Sapphire's opposite cells. 

"Told you," Sapphire said. 

"No WAY!" Ruby exclaimed. "They can- seriously?!" 

So, she'd escaped, but she was being pursued. That wasn't the _worst-_ the main reason she didn't want more guards showing up was that they'd do something to prevent the escape she'd already accomplished. With her metallikinetic flight, she could probably keep ahead of any of them that didn't have some kind of enhanced fusion speed. 

Wait, crap, at least one of them probably had some kind of enhanced fusion speed. 

What was her immediate objective? 

To find Steven. There were longer-term objectives, like defeating the fusion army and saving the entire human species from annihilation, but step one was finding Steven. Both on a practical level- Steven was at the very least a combination tank/white mage capable of neutralizing a wide variety of different threats with overpowered Diamond exotech- and on a personal level. It was _Steven!_ Obviously she needed to find Steven! 

What were the resources at her disposal? 

Herself and her powers, again. Her metallikinesis was more powerful and longer-range than Peridot's, which had already proven to be incredibly versatile. In direct combat, she could execute arbitrary movements which would be impossible for a fighter who needed their limbs to exert force on themselves- and her enhanced processing speed let her methodically bullet-time her way through engagements. She had enough mobility to bypass most obstacles- so it was a question of target selection. 

How could she use the resources at her disposal to accomplish her objective? 

This structure had apparently been constructed on-site, and prisoners were being kept there, not bubbled. That implied they didn't have easy access to a more secure primary base- meaning it was likely Steven was being held somewhere here, too. Those stone pylons that fell from the sky were likely the structure's foundations, which gave her a good sense of the building's scale. A full search would be time-consuming, but doable. 

That said, she could narrow down the search space. Steven- how would they contain Steven? He couldn't just be poofed and bubbled- in fact, the fact that _Peridot_ hadn't been bubbled, but instead imprisoned in a cell, reinforced her guess that there was no accessible primary base- no one on-site had a "home" location in range. So Steven was probably being held in a cell, too- but not in one of the brig cells, apparently. He was something of a VIP- there'd be added security. 

In fact, he was probably behind the _highest_ security they had available. Her own cell had been fairly rudimentary, since they knew a Peridot could potentially subvert metal mechanisms, but not exert significant physical force. For Steven, though, they'd be pulling out all the stops. 

Her _range_ had increased. She could feel metal in a wide area around her, giving her a fuzzy mental map. Metal floors in the central wing- and one particularly dense concentration of electrically active metals in the dead center. Notably, while it was ringed with signatures that suggested comms equipment, there was no comms equipment in the exact epicenter of that storage. That's how _she_ would design a high-security cell, at least in the broad strokes. And if this really was the work of a Peridot, her own intuition was good evidence. Or... wait, was it? Maybe that was a Connie instinct. 

On a whim, she decided to throw together a quick program to pipe her metallikinetic sensory inputs through her visor, generating a HUD with a minimap. This was a crucial step for any base infiltration. She was sure Steven would agree- or, no, wait, would he? He didn't really like shooters that much. Would he like Metal Gear Solid? That was a _maybe-_ the whole Les Enfants Terribles thing might remind him too much of his own family issues. 

She took off around a corner, and dashed through the halls of the partially-constructed base, heading for the center. 

A couple more fusions noticed her and tried to accost her, but they hadn't been prepared for combat. They especially hadn't been prepared for combat with someone who could think faster than they could move. One went down in a flash of photosteel, and the other barely managed to summon its spear before being tripped and landing on a sharpened foot. Four more gems went into bubbles, and she continued onward. 

There were a few visible entrances to the central holding chamber, but they were all guarded by larger fusions. She could take them down, but... 

More conveniently, a wall was incomplete, scaffolding exposed. In fact, she could see inside. So she did.


	9. Jailbreak 2: Metallic Boogaloo

He came to in a chamber. "Chamber" was the only word for it- it was a glass cylinder with a glowy floor, ringed by science doohickeys on the outside. The whole setup screamed "you are having Experiments done on you", which was immediately unsettling. He wasn't exactly sure what the point of Experiments was, but in the movies it was never good. 

He looked around. The room was a circle, a dark ring around his well-lit chamber. A few computery thingies were pressed up against the glass, and apart from that it was hard to see anything in the unlit darkness of the room. Where was- 

"Oh! Peridot!" 

Peridot, who'd been fiddling with some kind of computer console next to the chamber, looked up at him, her expression sour. "Oh, it's awake," she said. Wait, what? 

"Peridot, it's me! Are you-" 

Wait, Peridot was wearing her old limb enhancers. And her uniform was back to how it'd been when they met- had she been hit with a rejuvenator?! 

"It's me, Steven! Remember?" 

Peridot turned aside and called out to a figure in the darkness. "Steven is awake, my Diamond," she said. 

Wait, Yellow was here? How? This room was too small for her- but if she _was_ here, that was good! He could explain... whatever this misunderstanding was! 

The figure that stalked out of the shadows was not Yellow Diamond. And at the same moment, he noticed that Peridot's gem was upside-down. And also that there were at least two other Peridots at workstations in the room. 

_"Steven,"_ the figure that stalked out of the shadows said. Tall, thin, blue- wait. No, he recognized her- she was the gem who'd- 

_who'd crushed Peridot who'd drowned Connie who'd drowned Dad who'd broken his bubble and drowned him-_

-no, no, he had healing tears, if they were hurt he could make it better. He swallowed his horror as best he could. 

"Y-you- who are you?!" 

"I am the new Blue Diamond," she said. "This 'Earth' is now under my jurisdiction, as the preceding Blue Diamond has proven herself unfit to manage the colony." 

"That's not-" Steven started, his tongue leaping to the defense of Blue Diamond before realizing he, uh, didn't have anything to say about how Blue was in any way fit to manage a colony. Or that managing colonies was something she should've even been doing in the first place. 

"Not to worry," Blue? said. "I acknowledge your prior ownership of this colony, and I have no intention of seizing it without compensation." 

"You can't _seize_ Earth!" Steven countered. "It doesn't belong to anyone! And you can't just... _compensate_ me for, for Earth, you can't just buy a new-" 

Blue? suddenly leaned in close to the glass, a manic expression on her face. _"Oh?_ You don't believe that it's valid to take a planet away from someone by force and offer pitiful 'compensation' in return?" 

Wait, that sounded familiar- 

"Now, if I were you, I would think that was an _eminently_ reasonable solution to both of our problems!" Blue? sneered. "Perhaps in exchange for _your planet,_ I can offer to relocate you and your people to... oh, say, an _asteroid??"_

He stared. The triangular gem next to one eye, the teardrop under the other- it wasn't quite the same face, she was much taller, probably thanks to- 

That third round, white gem in her stomach. Where exactly...? 

* * *

A week ago, Volleyball was- 

-well, no. Volleyball certainly was _not._ That would be far too risky. 

_White_ Pearl was at the helm of the hand ship. Her host had been sent to advise Steven on negotiating the rogue Aquamarine's surrender, and had taken up the controls of the ship, which she had been told contained several squadrons of Amethyst and Ruby ground troops, for her defense. She was just following through the breach her allies had created in the defenses, when... 

When White Pearl arrived. 

White spun the controls and sent the hand ship reeling- headed straight for the vehicle bay, which her spies assured her would protect the ship from being dislodged by the Aquamarine's emergency disengagement protocol. 

The ship crashed, of course, though none of the nonexistent soldiers were harmed. The contents of the hold were damaged, but she'd ensured the damage would be easily repaired by a skilled technician. And, of course, the research was stored on superpersistent drives. The damaged ship crumpled and lay still. 

Then, White took the rejuvenator and removed the stabilizer. The explosion very neatly hid the evidence. 

It was sometime later that Pink Pearl was born, in the cockpit of a crashed hand ship. When she opened her eyes, of course, the first thing she saw was... her Aquamarine. 

* * *

There was what looked like a Pearl as a part of her, now, but... "Wait, _Aquamarine?"_

There were a lot of questions to ask about that, but he didn't get to ask any of them because there was suddenly a blade coming out of her chest. 

Aquamarine didn't poof, though- she growled, then spun around to see what had stabbed her. The spinning, though, pulled the assailant along with it by the blade, and an unfamiliar form smacked into the glass as Aquamarine spun around. 

Almost as soon as that happened, though, the form somehow shot away into the darkness before he could get a good look at them. What just- 

"KILL THEM!" Aquamarine barked at no one in particular, clutching her wound and holding it closed. 

The Peridots looked around. One of them pointed at herself. "...Who, me?" 

That Peridot was shortly separated into a Peridot head and a Peridot body, and then poofed, as a blur from the shadows zipped by and decapitated it. The other two Peridots met the same fate. 

"Wh- no! The- where are the Demantoids?" 

Aquamarine looked around the room. Steven followed her gaze- what was she looking for? There were... wait, there were gems on the floor, in the shadows around the edges of the room. Had there been guards there? Who'd poofed them? The same person who'd just poofed the Peridots and stabbed Aquamarine? Where were they? 

His eye caught movement in the shadows, and the figure shot out towards Aquamarine- a blur. 

"HEY!" he shouted, hoping he could be heard. "Are you here to save me?!" 

"Obviously!" the figure responded- and now he could see her, because she was suddenly still, locked in a clash with Aquamarine. His rescuer was decked out in green and white, with yellow spiky hair and star embellishments on her costume. Under the costume was shining, metallic skin. He couldn't see her face, yet, though, because she was turned away, focusing all her attention on breaking Aquamarine's defense with her sword-arms. _Sword arms!_ That was so cool! 

That cane Aquamarine wielded had been multiplied- holographic projections of it had sprung to life, forming a wall- a lattice, was the word, of stripey glowy blue things. The rescuer was slashing away at these projections with blinding speed, and Aquamarine was summoning more at an equally blinding pace. He couldn't even follow what was going on with his eyes- a barrage of slashes meeting a fireworks show of flashing canes. 

Then he heard a rush of water- water? Yeah, he wasn't wrong- water was coming up through grates in the floor from somewhere. What was that?! 

And... wait, the water was gathering, defying gravity and massing in one spot. Approaching... 

"BEHIND YOU!" Steven yelled, and it was just enough warning for the mystery gem to spin on her heels and jump out of the way of a water attack from behind. 

And then, for an instant, he could see her face. A... strangely familiar face, though he couldn't place it. 

No, wait, he could totally place it! The gem on her forehead- that was Peridot! Who'd- she'd fused? With who? Who was... he didn't see another gem. He looked closely, but whoever Peridot was with, she was moving too fast to see clearly. 

"There's _no_ way you can be this fast!" Aquamarine hissed. "DIE already!" 

Not-Peridot backflipped and flew around Aquamarine's offensive, which... _he'd_ have trouble even with his shield, just because of how many water fists and holo-canes were flying around the room. But her- she was gracefully dodging at speeds he could barely keep track of. 

Until she wasn't. A tidal wave slammed into her, and she went flying into a computer console. Electricity sparked, metal went flying, and in the wreckage... 

Wait, there was no one in the wreckage. It was kind of hard to look at, too- was there smoke in the air, some kind of haze that was messing with his eyes? 

Suddenly, he heard a battlecry. Peri-not was just... charging straight at Aquamarine, somehow having gotten behind her. 

Aquamarine's face broke into a wicked grin, and her teardrop gem began to glow. 

Water swirled around her, and she spun on her heels, consolidating all that water into an enormous fist. It was big enough to take up the entire height of the room, and there was no way Peri-not could dodge it. It slammed directly into her as Aquamarine cackled. 

"Foolish!" Aquamarine laughed, as Peri-not shattered into a million tiny glittering pieces. 

"Couldn't have put it better myself!" Peri-not shouted as she reappeared directly behind Aquamarine, empty space unfolding and shooting a sword-wielding fusion into Aquamarine's back at high speed. Clanging sounds echoed throughout the room as a chain of precisely-angled mirrors fell to the floor. 

"WHOOOOOOOA!" Steven marveled, applauding loudly. 

"Not to worry, Steven!" the mirror-skinned fusion said, straddling Aquamarine's impaled form. "Your knight in shining armor is here!" 

His knight in... 

_Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!_

"That's right! I, P... C... uhhhh..." 

"Pecuhhh?" 

"No, I... I'm just now realizing, don't fusions normally just _know_ what they're called? Or- no, wait, Amethyst named Stevonnie..." 

Steven beamed. "You're _Peronnie!"_

"Sure! Let's go with thaaaAAAAAAA!" Peronnie shouted, as Aquamarine- no more incapacitated by impalement than the last time- jumped to her feet and threw her into the ceiling. 

"Fantastic," she hissed, gesturing and sending a ton of water to pin Peronnie in place. "So I'll be killing _Peronnie."_


	10. Get Out of Jail 3

It had been too easy. 

The holding chamber was supposed to be high-security. And... it _was,_ but it was high-security for the prisoner. Sure, the cylinder was imperviglass, but the whole surrounding setup was riddled with security holes. One of which had been the literal hole in the wall that she'd used to enter. 

She could see the idea behind it- the ring of darkness where guards were lurking unseen. If Steven _had_ found a way out, he'd have been instantly surrounded by stealth troops. 

Unfortunately for them, it'd made it incredibly easy for an intruder to quietly take them all down one by one. Silent movement was easy when you literally didn't need to touch the ground to move. Going unseen was easy when the room was deliberately lit to conceal her targets. And quiet takedowns were easy when her marks didn't have lungs to gasp with. 

Everything sort of fell apart when Aquamarine turned out to be immune to stab, though. 

It had been a real fight, from there. Security was loose on the outside because _Aquamarine_ was on the outside, and that was security enough. Peronnie could see it in action- Aquamarine had something close to the same reaction time as her. That cane, those holograms- they couldn't exert a lot of force, but neither could she- and there were more holo-canes than sword arms, moving fast enough to react to her flurry of blows. And it all got even harder when the water showed up, and she'd been attacked from both sides. She'd needed a new strategy. 

The metal plating on the prison control consoles had been useful. She'd been able to feign a hit that gave her an excuse to smash one, which scattered shards of metal plating around the room. Her metallikinesis was more fine-grained than Peridot's, and she'd been able to smooth those shards into floating mirrors to conceal her true attack while her reflection went after Aquamarine- and that should've done it. 

If only she hadn't been so focused on _landing a hit,_ and thought even for _one second_ about why Aquamarine hadn't poofed from the first stab. She'd assumed it was some kind of trick, or maybe that it was a hit points thing. But no- no, it was obvious. 

She'd seen it in the fight- she _knew_ Aquamarine had a Peridot component. It explained some of the tech she had access to, and why the facility's layout matched her intuitions. She'd been so focused on- on, well, trying not to get hit, trying to find an opening- that she hadn't reconsidered the question. If she had, she'd have instantly realized it was because Peridots used phase-5 alignment-locked photomaterial. Rigid and almost impossible to destabilize without the paraphotonic effect, exhibiting incredible stability and crush resistance. 

At least _that_ was helping, now that she was being crushed to death. 

Okay, no, she could still do this. She had metallikinesis; being trapped didn't mean she was powerless. She reached out and took her mirrors, fashioned them into- she stopped fashioning them into a spear halfway through, because _that_ would've been a dumb mistake to make a third time. Instead she opted for slashing damage, pulling a cloud of ninja stars to Aquamarine. 

Aquamarine turned around and deflected them all with a whirring of holo-canes. It didn't even suffice as a distraction- the water continued to press in, the pressure rising. She was running out of options, running out of _time-_

Steven, fury and desperation on his face, tried to charge through the imperviglass and bust through like the Kool-Aid Man. Obviously, he bounced off. Aquamarine had _targeted_ him, this facility was _designed_ to hold him. There was no way he was going to burst out through that wall like the Kool-Aid Man. 

Then someone burst _in_ through a _different_ wall like the Kool-Aid Man. 

Actually, kind of a lot of someones. Several fusion guards, doing their best to restrain the huge, bulky, purple man who'd smashed straight through two feet of solid construction crystal, had been dragged along for the ride. 

Who was _that-_

"Who is _that_ supposed to be?!" Aquamarine demanded, glaring at the guards who were totally failing to contain the... he was some kind of giant, purple masked wrestler. In fact, he reminded her of- 

"I'M THE TOWER OF POWER," the Purple Puma roared, spinning in place and sending a fusion who'd been hanging on his arm through a wall. "TOO SWEET TO BE SOUR!" 

"We're sorry, my Diamond!" a stray Topaz said, staggering out of the hole in the wall. "He's too-" 

"FUNKY LIKE A MONKEY!" said the Purple Puma, except somehow huger and hairier and, wait, that wasn't Amethyst's voice- 

"Well, stop apologizing and kill it already!" Aquamarine demanded. 

"THE SKY'S THE LIMIT," he roared, and smashed a gigantic purple fist straight through the imperviglass. "AND SPACE IS THE PLACE!" 

"Ridiculous," Aquamarine spat, and directed more water to ensnare the intruder. Peronnie felt the pressure on herself decrease- there was some limit on how much Aquamarine could use at once? 

Liquid shackles wrapped themselves around the Purple Puma's limbs, but they didn't seem to do much. Neither did... the crisscrossing of yellow light that was spreading from the spots where one of the guards had managed to dig in a destabilizer. 

"TOO HOT TO HANDLE!" he shouted, grabbing the guard by the head. "TOO COLD TO HOLD!" He used the guard as a bludgeon, poofing it and widening the hole in the glass. Steven, wide-eyed and staring, took a second to process it and climb out through the broken glass. 

"Stupid, stupid!" Aquamarine hissed, piling on more water to block the exit. The pressure on Peronnie kept going down, though the pressure on the Purple Puma was probably increasing. Aquamarine probably thought he was a bigger threat, that the annoying speedster who'd failed to kill her twice was safe to deprioritize. 

She'd show _her._

The Purple Puma, seeing the water trying to push Steven back into the chamber, grabbed _Steven_ with one hand and pulled him away. The water was starting to visibly slow him down, though. 

She barely managed to catch what the hulking figure whispered to Steven. 

"Ready, Shtu-ball?" 

With another roar, the Puma _jumped_ out of the water and _chucked_ Steven directly at Aquamarine. He was fast enough to put up a spike-ball bubble before impact, serving as a projectile weapon. "AQUAMANIA IS LIKE A SINGLE GRAIN OF SAND IN THE SAHARA DESERT THAT IS MACHO GRAMETHYST!!!" 

Oh my god. No, come _on!_ That wasn't fair! This was _her_ cool discovery! How had _Amethyst_ and _Greg_ figured that out?! Neither of them knew anything about fusion! About photomaterial! About the nature of the destabilizer's paraphotonic effect, or Diamond exotech, or material reconstruction! They knew how to wrestle and play guitar, respectively! What, had they just- 

...They'd probably just _tried,_ because they were locked in a cell together with nothing better to do. And it'd worked, because Steg. 

And- wait, hold on. 

No, that wasn't time slowing down while she processed her, in retrospect, totally unfair and childish outrage. That was Gramethyst and Steven both having been frozen in midair. 

Aquamarine let out a deliberate sigh of relief as she pointed her cane at the two of them, holding them in place. "I guess I _can_ still do that." 

What- wait, the- Aquamarine, she was _that_ Aquamarine? The "are you my dad" Aquamarine? So... 

"I had some trouble getting it to work earlier," she mused. "It wasn't behaving the same way as when it was a wand. More limited, you know? I was quite annoyed." 

She began pacing around the frozen forms of Steven and the Greg-Amethyst fusion, keeping her cane leveled on them. "I get it now, though. It's water- there's sort of an interaction between my components. I gained hydrokinesis on par with- no, _surpassing_ a Lapis- but other capacities were rearranged." She laughed. Was she... _monologuing?_

"It's funny, you know. I see it, now, how this happened. Or- well, I'm still in the dark as to _how_ it happened, exactly, but I see now doubling up on containment was a mistake. Humans _can_ fuse with gems! It's fascinating! Something to weaponize, perhaps... yes, of course. Though I suspect the cost would be precisely the cost _you're_ now paying." 

She _was_ monologuing! She was going to _gloat,_ in excruciating detail, about how her brilliant evil schemes had laid them all low! Of _course_ she was doing that- she was an Aquamarine, she was a Peridot, she was... was that a _Pearl?_ Where had she gotten a Pearl? 

"Human beings- fascinating creatures, actually. I came into possession of some _very_ interesting information recently, you see. Did you know that the human body is sixty percent _water?_ It is! And that makes _you_ freaks... what, thirty percent? Certainly enough for me to take complete control of your bodies, thanks to the water dispersed throughout them. _That_ was enough for my cane to work with." 

Yes, okay, she was definitely monologuing. And if Peronnie didn't exploit the villain's monologuing, she had _no right_ to call herself a hero. 

The water pressure on her hadn't gone back up, so she took the opportunity to try to swim out. It wasn't quite working, though, so she tried the next best thing- looking pathetic and easy to taunt. 

"Grblrbrlrlblblbl!" she grblrbld, thrashing about in the water. 

"Oh?" Aquamarine said, turning to face her. "What's that? You have something to say?" 

Aquamarine was clearly working with her on this one- she wanted to monologue, and Peronnie wanted her to monologue. So it wasn't surprising when she pulled back some water to free her head, allowing her to provide fuel for the monologue. 

"What do you mean 'fascinating information' about humans? Did _you_ do this to them?!" Peronnie demanded, setting out a hook. 

Yep, there it was, her eyes lighting up. Not surprising. 

"Oh, of course! Couldn't have a bunch of _apes_ dirtying up _my_ new planet, you know." 

"But... you're fine with having a bunch of _incredibly hostile super-monsters_ dirtying up your new planet?" 

"Incredibly hostile super-monsters too dumb to use gem technology to resist, too violent to coordinate with each other, and too ugly for certain bleeding-heart _former_ Diamonds to feel bad about killing, yes!" 

She gestured at Steven for that last part, which demonstrated that she really didn't understand him at _all._

"Fine," she said, hanging limp in the water. "But how? How was it even possible? Humans aren't like gems- their physical forms can't just be scrambled by a weird sound! And how did you do it without humans to test on?! It doesn't make any sense!" 

That did it. Aquamarine was busting out the holographic diagrams. "I'm glad you asked!" she said, cackling. "Of course I _did_ have humans to test on. Did you know that there exists a small facility out in the Cygnus arm which so happens to contain a sizable test population? And thousands of years of observation and test data on said humans?" 

Wait, what? There was? 

She could see Steven and Gramethyst's eyes go wide. Did they know something? They couldn't talk, frozen like that- what was it? 

Then she saw Steven's eyes _close,_ and a moment later she felt his presence in her head. Right, the- the dream telepathy thing! And he was conveying... images. Pictures of a facility manned by Amethysts of various shapes and sizes- plus a Holly Blue Agate keeping them in line. A facility designed to hold onto... 

Right! The _zoo!_ That's what Connie was forgetting! She hadn't been there with him, and he didn't talk about it much. _That_ was it- that was why there hadn't been any undocumented arrivals on Earth! She hadn't _needed_ to arrive on Earth, not until just now! 

But... wait. That zoo was controlled by Blue Diamond, wasn't it? 

"The human zoo- wait, how did you get past Blue Diamond?" 

Aquamarine smiled a wicked grin. "Oh, there was no need to get _past_ Blue Diamond. After all, I was one of her most trusted lieutenants! As soon as I discovered it existed, it was child's play to waltz in and requisition the biological data compiled there." 

That... didn't line up, did it? Aquamarine- Steven had mentioned, she'd been trying to conquer a planet, they'd sent ships after her! It was this whole mission, subduing a traitor. What was the timeline here? Had she taken the human data before going rogue? Why? Or- what, had the Agate not been informed of Aquamarine's rebellion? And how did Aquamarine even find out about the zoo? What was going on there? 

More images from Steven. The pink Pearl, Volleyball, on the bridge of one of the ships sent on that mission. She'd disappeared during the battle, along with her ship. That- wait, did that mean... the Pearl in Aquamarine's... 

The _eyepatch!_ That Pearl's eye was damaged- if she fused, would that... but wait, how... why...? 

"And with that," Aquamarine continued, "it was trivial to set up the initial bombardment from high orbit. See, humans reproduce _individually,_ copying themselves and combining their manifestation instructions. As a result, those instructions are distributed through each of the lipid bilayer-enclosed functional units in the gestalt. There's no need to target and circumvent protections for a single well-defended gem- every last "cell" in their bodies contains machinery for individual reproduction, which can be hijacked to construct novel bioforms. _Billions_ of attack surfaces!" 

Now- Peronnie was a little distracted with the construction and mirror-cloaking of her weapon, but that still didn't make any sense, and she wanted to resolve her confusion _almost_ as badly as she wanted to keep stalling. 

"Hang on- I can buy that you somehow figured out how to remote-hack human cells with- what, neutrino-interaction manifolds, probably? But why the _song?_ It doesn't make sense as a vector of infection!" 

The look on her face- she was clearly having the time of her life. "Oh, you _fool!_ You really thought the song was the infection vector, just because it sounded the same as _gem_ degeneration? You _actually_ fell for that?!" 

"The epidemiology of the phenomenon-" 

Aquamarine cackled. "Oh, the _epidemiology?_ That's _long_ finished, I'm afraid. Once I had a working vector, I infected the entire population at once from orbit! The song is simply a _catalyst_ for the reaction!" 

"What, like a trigger?" 

"Of course! You see, to keep my monsters _alive,_ the underlying machinery of the organisms needed to remain intact. The novel bioforms constructed on top are obviously unstable, so the subject needs to maintain focus to sustain them. A quick tweak to the active-memory neural pathways, and the music acts as a shortcut to a cycle trap containing the more-durable maintenance circuit constructed to manage the cell overrides! Unable to focus on anything but maintaining their forms, they act on their animal instincts!" 

She... had to make a few leaps of logic to guess the implementations there, but it _sort of_ made sense. The only question was... why use such an unstable enforcement mechanism? If she was able to remotely construct novel brain circuitry for managing some sort of super-cancer, why _allow_ it to be resisted? 

No, that _wasn't_ the only question. Taking a step back- she could hack people's brains from space without being noticed. She'd apparently done so to everyone _already,_ to set up the contrived mechanism by which the monster plague could spread. Why hadn't she just... _killed_ everyone, if the plan was to wipe out humanity? That should've been _way_ easier! 

She wanted humanity alive, for some reason. But why all _this?_ If they were going to be hostages, why not just put them all in comas? If they were going to be _weapons,_ well, that didn't make any sense- the human monsters were really no match for gems, barring a few exceptions like Mr. Smiley. If she just wanted weapons, well, Earth was _right there,_ she could just set up injectors and drain it dry to build a _gem_ army. 

This whole scheme seemed overcomplicated to a fault. What was the point of this whole... zombie apocalypse scenario, really? She could've _won_ so much easier than this! The only thing it seemed to actually _accomplish_ that another plan _wouldn't_ accomplish... was... 

...what, psychological impact? On who? 

Well, probably humans or Earth gems, since this whole thing was engineered in a way that made it possible for a handful of people to resist it. Otherwise, she'd probably have done _something_ to stop the gems, or clean up the human survivors. Someone needed to witness what she was doing. But why would- 

_Steven._

Of _course_ it was to get to Steven. They'd had to have known _he'd_ be immune, and- and they'd built this whole special holding chamber just for him, focusing on him and ignoring interference from the outside. 

This was another one of Rose Quartz's old enemies, armed with some kind of unimaginable trauma and some ludicrous scheme to get revenge for some perceived or actual harm she'd suffered at the hands of Pink Diamond. And once again, humanity was caught in the crossfire. 

Ugh! 

_Ugh!!!_

She loved Steven and all, but how come _she_ didn't get to have her _own_ supervillain for once? How come _Connie's_ mom hadn't made thousands of years of superpowered space enemies? It wasn't _fair!!_

That was _it._ That was the _last straw._ She was going to clean up this _stupid_ mess, save humanity, and get back to... uh, saving humanity, but different. 

The air groaned with the sound of creaking metal. 

"Wait, what was-" Aquamarine said, and then the mirrors concealing Peronnie's mechanism fell away. 

She could only exert so much force at once with her metallikinesis- but that force could be stored. Ratchets, springs, storing up potential energy bit by bit in crude crossbows. A couple dozen of them, constructed from stripped computer consoles, all pointed at Aquamarine. 

Stabbing hadn't worked before, so when a couple dozen scissor blades turned Aquamarine into a pincushion, Peronnie didn't stop there. The springs attached to the paired blades were released, and the auto-scissors _sliced_ through photomaterial, tearing glowing gashes in Aquamarine's physical form. 

A moment later, the water fell to the ground with Peronnie inside. Steven in his spike-bubble fell to the ground, and Gramethyst fell down face-first as his frozen throwing pose unfroze. 

"OOH, YEAH, THAT'S GOOD," he groaned. 

Peronnie landed gracefully amidst the splash of water, staring down at- 

-oh, crap. Even _that_ hadn't done it. Aquamarine was still intact, the holes opened by the attack visible on her body. It'd just broken her concentration, that was all. What was it going to _take?_

As Aquamarine began to get to her feet, Peronnie's hands became hammers, and Gramethyst started running on all fours towards them, and- 

-and then there was a blinding white light, the ceiling was vaporized, and White Diamond was standing above the scene, looking down at Aquamarine. 

"That's quite enough of _that,_ she said, firing a massive white laser at her and instantly poofing her. "I can't have _rebels_ endangering _my_ Pi- Steven." __

_ _ Oh, no _way._ No! _ _

_ _ This... wasn't... fair! Not _fair!_ That killstealing- not fair not fair not fair not fair not fair not FAIR! _ _


	11. Some Failures

Well, _this_ had been a mess. 

Aquamarine was _supposed_ to have used the biodata from Pink's zoo to _destroy_ them all. This business with _monsters_ was altogether too _curable._ It'd given Pink _hope_ that she could simply _fix_ her toys again. It wasn't much use if Pink still had a reason to stay on that backwater clump of dirt and obsess over lesser beings. 

What had gone wrong? Blue's psych report wasn't supposed to be fallible, and her Sapphires had been unanimous in their predictions given the available data. The Aquamarine and the Peridot had both been selected for out-of-control egotism- a pair of control freaks. Together, they shouldn't have left anything up to chance. They were supposed to cleanly exterminate the population of Earth, leaving Pink with no hope and no reason to sulk on her failed colony. 

She eyed the gems that fell from where she'd poofed the Aquamarine. 

The _Pearl._ Of _course._ That had been a last-minute addition to the plan- a strong but plausibly-deniable sign of favor from the Diamonds, enabling them to get past the Holly Blue Agate guarding the zoo without raising alarms. But... it hadn't just taken the Pearl as a _servant,_ no. It'd _fused_ with the pathetic little thing, taking its worship into itself. The _new_ Aquamarine must have been much more confident, more certain that it could get away with anything it wanted, no matter how unnecessarily complicated. 

_Fusions._ This was _exactly_ why she'd discouraged their existence. They made everything so much more unpredictable. 

"W-w-wait, what?! How are you...?!" something soggy said. 

"And you are...?" she asked. 

It- some kind of fusion, ugh- executed a flawless salute. "Peronnie, Facet-0001 Cut-001, reporting," it said. What, exactly, was a Peronnie supposed to be? 

"White!" Pink exclaimed, getting off the floor. "You're just in time!" 

"Yes," she agreed. "I am." 

This had become _dangerous._ The monsters were a risk, but she'd trusted Pink could survive long enough for her to leisurely fly over and clean up the mess. When she'd heard that Aquamarine had actively taken her _captive,_ though... that necessitated moving up the timetable. She had an excuse prepared for- 

"My Diamond," the "Peronnie" spoke up. It wore an inquisitive, borderline-disrespectful glare, despite the otherwise deferential posture. "We were told you wouldn't be arriving for another two weeks, due to the mass driver limits of the local warp network." 

She smiled a #8, soft and sweet to everyone but the direct object of her attention. "How fortunate for you that I, in my brilliance, found means by which to arrive sooner than projected." 

The Peronnie looked flabbergasted. "What, so... you just casually achieved a major breakthrough in faster-than-light transportation, over the course of... what was it, three days?" 

"Yes," she replied, holding the #8 fixed in place. 

"How in the _world_ did you-" 

"Oh, _Pink!"_ she said, turning her attention away and ignoring it. The fusion appeared to include a Peridot, so it'd surely be curious, but every gem knew that White Diamond could do anything if she put her mind to it. It didn't need to know the specifics, or that the obstacle had never truly existed in the first place. 

"White!" Pink said, scrambling over to the gems on the ground. "You really saved us- Aquamarine was totally out of control!" 

Well, she wasn't wrong. 

"Of course, dear," she said. "Now- we have a lot of work to do, don't we? We need to round up and imprison the traitors who attacked your planet, after all." 

Pink frowned. "Uh, about that... I think I know why they did it, and I don't think we need to-" 

Oh, she was going to plead for mercy on behalf of the people who'd attacked her. How very like her. She gave her a #12, the Smile For Pink, and then her army airdropped in behind her and she began collecting the fallen. 

"Dismantle this place," she said to her troops, gesturing to the walls. "Bubble the attackers. After all, we're going to need to restore the fountain if we're going to restore the human race." 

"Wait- first, we need to talk about-" Pink started, and then White headed back up to her waiting ship. 

* * *

She... wasn't quite fast enough. 

She didn't recognize the gems that accompanied White Diamond at all- they were tall, white, mostly faceless things, forming mouths only when they needed to speak (which appeared to be "only when spoken to".) She'd never heard of anything like them before- they must have been some new type, reserved for White's personal use. 

They reminded her of those spear-throwing ice things from the Snowpeak Ruins dungeon in Twilight Princess... but a lot faster. She had to test it- were these things faster than _her?_

She tested it by throwing herself into the path of one as it dashed to grab and bubble Aquamarine's components, trying to snag them before it could. 

She decided, subsequently, that it would have been smarter to _think_ a little more about that plan before executing on it. She came to this decision whilst hurtling bodily into a wall, a phenomenon doubtless related to the high-speed collision she'd just precipitated. And then, she- 

* * *

-was fine. Kind of. She hadn't been fine a second ago, but only because she hadn't _been_ a second ago. It was always kind of disorienting, and this time it was disorienting in a totally different way. 

The memories of being Peronnie weren't the same as the memories of being Stevonnie. Stevonnie wasn't all _that_ different from her- Steven was human, and digesting Stevonnie's memories minus the Steven-y parts wasn't too weird. Sometimes there would be missing pieces- times she couldn't remember exactly why Stevonnie had done something, because they'd done it based on some memory of something important only _Steven_ had known about. Those times weren't too common, though- Steven told her everything, or everything he thought was worth mentioning, so they were usually on the same page afterwards. 

Peridot, though, was an alien technician with a massive database of highly-specific knowledge of gem technology inside her head. She'd made... all kinds of different decisions, based on things she just _knew_ about how gem-tech worked and how other gems operated. All those memories were suddenly devoid of context, a stream of things she'd done... _because._

Oh, but she remembered the stealth takedowns just fine. That made sense- Peridot had probably never played a Metal Gear "gamer" in her life, and probably thought "sneaky" was a kind of limb enhancer. 

"Connie!" 

Steven was running over, towards her, away from the site of the crash- and, wait, no! 

"Steven!" she shouted, trying to point out- no, it was too late, the white thing had bubbled the Aquamarine bits, he couldn't stop it. 

"Connie!" he repeated, beaming and leaping into her arms. She stumbled a bit, but it was a practiced maneuver- he was doing the weightless thing, so she didn't have any trouble catching him. She swung him around a few times, and she saw his gem begin to glow and braced herself for a moment, before it faded. He was probably right- now was the time for talking, not for Stevonnie. 

"Eugh, my _head,"_ Peridot complained, staggering to her feet amidst the wreckage of the wall they'd been slammed into. "Is it always like this?" 

"Steven!" Connie said, putting her boyfriend down. (Hee, her _boyfriend,_ she still wasn't used to that.) "What happened? Did they do anything to you? Are you okay?" 

Steven, surprising no one, went in for the hug. "I'm fine! Are _you_ okay?" 

She checked herself over. She... seemed fine. Her clothes were all soaked, weirdly, but... well, that made sense, didn't it? The fusion process could handle arbitrary clothing and equipment, but it probably didn't try to sort through what was and wasn't clothing. So the water she'd been lying in before she fused, that'd come along for the ride. She was actually pretty grateful that the algorithm- whatever it was- erred on the side of preserving modesty. 

Oh, also, she didn't have any injuries, which was probably what Steven was concerned about. "No, yeah, I'm fine! But... what just happened?!" 

"No idea, dude," Amethyst said. Wait, Amethyst? 

"Hhhhhey there, Shtu-ball. Peridot. Connie," Greg said, following behind her. The two of them had apparently unfused. "That was pretty wild, huh?" 

"Dad! Amethyst! Was that- who was- you were...!" 

Amethyst chuckled. "Yeeeeeeah, we were pretty surprised that actually worked. We both just..." 

_"Reaaaaally_ wanted to punch down some walls to rescue you," Greg finished. "And, well, whaddaya know..." 

Steven's eyes were doing the anime thing again. _"How did you do that?"_

"Well, allow me to explain," Peridot began, and Connie resigned herself to her new temporary position as a technobabble translator. 

* * *

New plan. She needed a new plan. The Aquamarine was a failure, and she'd need to dispose of it carefully. No doubt Pink would want to speak to it, so shattering was out of the question for the time being. And yet... Pink _actually_ speaking with it would be dangerous. The use of monsters, as opposed to a death virus, made the source of her information easier to figure out. There were plenty of ways to _kill_ those fragile little things, but _mutating_ them took engineering knowledge that pointed in inconvenient directions. 

She shouldn't have given her access to the biodata. Or maybe she should've just shattered the defective Pearl. Or she should've sent a Larimar to requisition the data in secret. Most of all, she should've respected the instability of Sapphire predictions before making changes to the original plan. 

She couldn't _bear_ it. She'd made... so _many mistakes!_ Ever since she'd started seeing them, they were everywhere. Flaws, errors, imperfections- infesting her being like so many worms. And no matter how many flaws she fixed, there were always _more._ When would it end? When would she be whole again? 

Be calm. She needed to be calm. This time- _this_ time, her plan would be flawless. She would plaster over the cracks in her recent failure, and then she would devise a _truly_ perfect plan. 

The humans- she _could_ fix them, but that was counter to what she was trying to accomplish. She and the other Diamonds would make as if to _try,_ certainly, but they would deliver the tragic news that it was simply impossible. Impossible, short of wiping their minds entirely. After all, the music was in their minds, touching all of their thoughts. No, it simply couldn't be done- this was to be irreversible. After some time "trying", Pink would eventually be forced to admit defeat and put the monsters down. Yes, that would do it. 

Aquamarine could be disposed of in the high-security holding facility. Pink would demand an audience, and be given one. With a copy, of course, a new Aquamarine coached to reject her olive branches and refuse to budge. If she began to be somehow subverted anyway, if she deviated from script... she'd need a pretext for a guard to destabilize her on the spot. That meant fury- Blue could provide a vial of Bitter Tears, and a discreet mechanism could be set up to deliver it. Have a Peridot feign a technical malfunction with containment, provoke the Aquamarine into lashing out, poof, bubble. Shatter and dispose of the real Aquamarine and the guards involved afterwards. Either way, it'd end with Pink disappointed and alienated. Good. 

Wait. Wait, no, there were- _no,_ there were _flaws_ in her plan! What if Pink subverted the _guards?_ She had no reason to, the guards shouldn't be interesting enough to bother interrogating, but- but what if? No, no, no! _Why?_ Why couldn't her plan just be perfect?! __

_ _ Be calm. _ _

_ _ She couldn't be calm. She couldn't even _be calm_ perfectly! How?! It was perfectly simple! How could she fail to _not_ feel emotions? It should have been as easy as doing _nothing!_ _ _

_ _ She felt a familiar sensation in her eyes. Was Blue nearby? On her ship? No, she was... down on the planet, consoling Pink. Then... if that was the case, why were her eyes leaking water?_ _


	12. 魔法の温泉での天下分け目決闘: Fateful Duel at the Magical Hot Spring!!!

"I don't want to talk about it." 

"Come _ooooooon,_ Lars! You can't keep me in the dark about this stuff! It's fate-of-the-world important!" 

"It's not! It's really not, okay?" 

"The people deserve the full scoop! If you leave out an explanation for the mysterious chemicals on your uniform, they're going to wonder! They're going to demand the truth! _I'm_ going to demand the truth!" 

"Well, tough!" 

"Oh, you want to play _tough?_ This folded steel isn't just for show, my friend- _tough_ is a fight you're not gonna win!" 

"Wha- you're _threatening me with a sword?_ You can't be seri-" 

"I'm _dead_ serious, Lars." 

"That's- no, you know what? That wouldn't be the first time you've tried to kill me, would it? That makes _total_ sense for you." 

"Heh. You _know_ there's nothing I wouldn't do to uncover the truth." 

"Ronaldo, I swear to god- HEY! Are you serious?! Put that thing down!" 

"You're dealing with a man whose principles were forged in the crucible of inescapable, all-enshrouding darkness, Lars. There's no-" 

"I _threw up,_ okay?!" 

Ronaldo lowered his imitation katana. "...You what?" 

"I threw up!" Lars said, throwing up his hands. "It's barf! Because all the spaceships suddenly accelerated at like a million Gs, and I'm not made of rocks!" 

"Wha... you mean, that's not... brainwashing... chemical?" 

"Is _that_ what you thought?! You seriously need to get your head examined!" 

As the argument devolved into a splash-fight, Connie yawned. She was pretty exhausted after... well, everything. On reflection, every single thing that'd happened since Steven got home had been exhausting. 

She looked down at Peridot, who was likewise sitting at the edge of the pool. Less likewise, she was watching Lars and Ronaldo of them intently, an intense expression on her face. 

"What's... on your mind?" she asked. 

"I'm suspicious," she said, continuing to stare. 

"Of?" 

"Everything. But specifically, the timing." 

Connie nodded- the Diamonds showing up _had_ been pretty weird- but she wasn't sure what that had to do with Lars and Ronaldo. 

Peridot pointed. "Lars was with the main fleet at the time. The one that White somehow managed to jump across the galaxy the instant Steven was in danger." 

"You think he knows something?" 

"I do." 

"Do you want to... ask him?" 

Peridot's pointing finger moved over a little. "I'm letting _that_ one handle the interrogation for me. There's a personal connection, and he seems to have the right attitude." 

Connie looked over at the continuing splash-fight and raised an eyebrow. "I don't know if I'd call that, um, the 'right attitude', exactly." 

"Shh." 

Connie sighed. "Peridot, I don't think you're going to get much information out of watching this." 

"Maybe. Shh." 

"Why are you watching-" 

"I want to see who wins. Shh." 

She looked over at the boys, whose splash fight under the partially-demolished prison wall had begun to escalate. She wasn't sure how "winning" was supposed to be defined in this context. Was there a scoring system, or something? It'd never really been _competitive_ when she fought Steven. 

"Ackpth!" Lars ackpth'd, getting a faceful of healing water. "Quit it! What do you even _want?!"_

"The Truth! You're not telling me the whole story!" 

"I did!" Lars said, dodging a splash. "I was on the ship, they ordered us to go to Earth, then suddenly the ship's engine went crazy and we got here real fast!" 

_"How_ fast?" Ronaldo demanded. He submerged himself to the neck and surfaced fast, a practiced maneuver which propelled a wide-area fusillade into the air. 

Lars took cover under the water, and then reemerged a few feet away, dodging the follow-up splash Ronaldo had planned to hit him with. This clearly wasn't his first splash-fight- a combatant without goggles forced underwater was giving their opponent time to set up a bigger attack. Somehow, he'd known to read Ronaldo's movements from _under_ the water- maybe the healing fountain's water didn't irritate his eyes? 

"I don't know! The speeds have so many zeroes on them-" 

"How _long_ did it take?" Ronaldo said, pressing his assault. A directional blast barely clipped Lars' ear. 

Lars finally started counterattacking, unleashing a wide but shallow slash that forced Ronaldo to back up. "I didn't do any secret brainwashed missions to hollow out the planet, Ronaldo! It was ten minutes, tops!" 

Connie noticed Peridot's eyes go wide at the same time as Ronaldo's. They'd noticed... the same thing? 

"So what you expect me to believe," Ronaldo said, drawing his sword from his scabbard, "is that the _cryptid apocalypse_ was happening, and you could've gotten here that fast at _any time?"_

"Wh- no, I didn't _know_ we could move that fast! I don't think _anyone_ knew!" Lars snapped, backing up. "And- and put that thing away!" 

"As you wish," Ronaldo said, tossing his katana into the pool behind him with a splash. "You claim it caught you by surprise, then?" 

"That's why the barf on my uniform, yes! Are you happy?" Lars's eye was on the katana as it sank. He began circling, trying to get in range to grab at it. To... like, hold it hostage, right? He wasn't planning to _use_ the sword on Ronaldo, surely. 

"Happy?" Ronaldo asked. "I won't be _happy_ until I've uncovered the root of the conspiracy to mutate all mankind!" 

Ronaldo smirked, and suddenly spun around with surprising agility, pulling his scabbard through the water. Lars dove, but rather than splash, Ronaldo held position, waiting for him to surface. 

Underwater, Lars dashed, planning to slip right past Ronaldo's defenses. Unfortunately, he misjudged the distance, and was forced to surface for air. Which... okay, pink-ified Lars still needed to breathe, apparently. 

_"Omae wa mou... bishonure!"_

As Lars surfaced and gasped for breath, Ronaldo struck. Holding his scabbard like a javelin, he executed a perfect throw- and didn't let go. As the scabbard's momentum halted, the water inside kept going- a powerful, solid stream that caught Lars directly in the face. He went down, hard. 

Ronaldo folded his arms and chuckled. 

"Ten minutes," Peridot said, making Ronaldo jump because she'd approached him silently from behind on her trash can lid. 

"N-NANI?!?!" 

"No, my name is Peridot," she replied, failing to get what Connie could tell was a pretty smoothly executed reference, considering he'd been genuinely panicking. "Ten minutes. Do you think he's lying?" 

Ronaldo recovered his composure, and began thoughtfully pulling at his chin, as if he had a beard to stroke. "Mmmmaaaybe. Hard to say. He's either telling the truth, or the brain-slug controlling his body is better at acting than usual." 

"Brain-slug?" 

Ronaldo took another look at Peridot, and narrowed his eyes. "Surely _you_ know all about them, little green man." 

Peridot looked slightly confused. "I'm a gem," she said, gesturing at herself after checking herself up and down. 

"Hmph." Ronaldo sheathed his- um, returned his scabbard to... scabbard position. There wasn't really a verb for that. Sworded? Could one sword their sheath? Connie wasn't sure. She'd have to ask Pearl about that one. Usually scabbards just stayed there, she was pretty sure, and Pearl always just used her gem anyway. "Little green gem, then." 

"If he's not lying... surely, you know what that means," Peridot said. 

Ronaldo nodded. "It means White Diamond... was _already here."_

"Like Lord English?" Connie asked. 

_"Exactly_ like Lord English," Ronaldo agreed, sagely. 

"What?" Peridot asked. "No. They clearly traveled- I mean, there would need to be a preexisting mass relay, if they didn't warp." 

Lars staggered to his feet, dripping. "What in the _world_ is _anyone_ talking about?" 

Peridot pointed an accusatory finger. "Lars! When you experienced that extreme acceleration, what was visible outside the main viewport?" 

"Why?! What's the point of any of these questions?!" 

"Answer, o defeated one!" Ronaldo demanded. 

"That's- I'm not- gah! Whatever!" Lars said, floating on his back. "Actually, I couldn't see anything out the windshield. It all just lit up white the whole time." 

Peridot nodded. "So it _was_ a mass relay. Punch bypass velocity exposes the ship to the normal course of particle exposure over a compressed timeframe." 

"Punch what?" Connie asked. "Is that like... um. I actually don't know anything about faster-than-light travel..." 

_"Ha,"_ Peridot laughed. "You don't know? Lucky you. It's a horrible mess that'll bend your brain in knots if you're not a Sapphire. All you need to know is that Lars' ship was moved via mass relay." 

"Which means what?" 

Peridot paused for a moment. "...It's like... so, imagine the universe as a... picture yourself, but backwards, and you're walking through..." 

She trailed off. 

"Peridot?" 

She shook her head. "You know what? It doesn't matter. Implementation aside, what it means is that a large number of big machines were installed along the interstellar route used. You need the big machines to move across those distances in a way that preserves the convenient illusion of Cartesian space and linear universal time." 

"I _knew_ it," Ronaldo said, fist-pumping. 

Peridot stared at him. "You _what?"_

"I _knew_ linear time was an illusion! The Secret Society of Watchmakers has been deceiving the people all along!" 

"Wait, the reason humans haven't figured out FTL is... a secret society suppressing information?" 

Lars groaned. "Don't listen to him, he's just making stuff up." 

"I am _not!_ There's no _way_ you can explain the mysterious disappearance of Peedee's birthday cake within the confines of linear chronology! It _had_ to have been anti-birthday time travelers!" 

"You ate it." 

"I did _not!"_

"You ate the cake." 

"It was a _decoy_ cake, planted by the Watchmakers! I did what had to be done!" 

"You can't seriously be fooling _yourself_ with this, can you?" 

"Who's the fool? Take _this!"_

Connie swam over to Peridot as Ronaldo and Lars broke off to resume their splash-fight. "So... what _was_ that all about? Is something important about these mass relays?" 

Peridot sighed. "It's that they _exist._ They've clearly existed for some time. They couldn't have deployed them just now, obviously." 

"Obviously." 

Peridot frowned. "Sorry. Um... see, you can't _exactly_ violate lightspeed. Basically anything that lets you bypass it... requires 'borrowing' from time itself. To charge a mass relay, you need to send equivalent mass _at_ lightspeed, and have it get there _slower_ than lightspeed. Repeat with additonal mass over additional time to charge up for bigger payloads moving faster." 

Connie thought back to her physics textbook, considered several serious objections to that, and then decided to stop pretending like her physics textbook had any idea what it was talking about. 

"Okay. That makes perfect sense." 

"So, to move a fleet... provided you have as much mass as you want at your disposal, which they do, the minimum time to charge is... the total time it would take to make the trip normally. Factoring in the other lightspeed workarounds, two weeks for a fleet to arrive is about right. If they didn't have the mass relay, that's how long it would've taken them to get here." 

Wait, what? "But... they _did_ have it. Why didn't they just use it?" 

Peridot nodded. "The specifics aside, that's the same thing the Fryman human clearly picked up on. We all knew it should've been two weeks. Instead, it took... not even three days, but ten minutes. Ten minutes because they just used a mass relay, which the Diamonds _had_ to have known about. They're expensive to build- it takes an intergalactic empire to afford an astroengineering project of that scale." 

"So... the question is, why wait?" 

"That's the thing," Peridot said. "What was the trigger? What made them risk exposing their lie?" 

Well, that was obvious. "Steven, right?" 

Peridot froze. "Steven?" 

"...Yeah? Aquamarine captured him, remember? So, because he was in danger, they rushed over here, even though... for some reason they were pretending they couldn't, before." 

Peridot shook her head. "No, that attack... it was several hours until you woke up, but it was just ten minutes before their arrival that they decided to start rushing. If it was just our distress call, they would've shown up even earlier." 

Oh. Well, that made things confusing again. If it wasn't the distress call... 

"...Wait, what distress call?" 

Peridot's eyes widened. "What do you mean, what distress call?" 

"Who made the distress call, I mean? When?" 

"I..." 

Peridot looked like she was thinking. "So... _you_ didn't make a distress call," Connie guessed. 

"No, I... I mean, we didn't have- the Communication Hub, we'd need to call them..." 

And... "Who was manning the Communication Hub? Did we have people there?" 

"I- yes. We had... some Nephrites, I think. And they were in contact with..." 

"With someone who maybe got poofed as soon as Aquamarine landed, and didn't get to put out a distress call?" 

"...Probably," Peridot said slowly. "Wait, if we didn't put out a distress call... how did they know?" 

Connie thought. "Well... Aquamarine didn't attack the Communication Hub, right? So the Nephrites were probably still there. But they probably didn't know anything was wrong, right?" 

Peridot nodded. "But... they would've checked." 

"Eventually," Connie said. "Maybe after nobody called in for a few hours, and they started to get suspicious." 

Peridot nodded. "We can check that. We need to ask when the distress call went out. Because... if it _was_ because they heard about Aquamarine, then..." 

Connie nodded gravely. This... was pretty bad. If they'd been willing to let the music keep going for two weeks... but they _could've_ arrived at any time, and lied about it... and the whole reason they hadn't suspected the Diamonds was that they were on their way to help... 

* * *

"...said they showed up about twelve minutes later." 

Steven's face fell. "No." 

"I'm sorry, Steven. It... there's too much that adds up." 

He shook his head, horror in his voice. "No, no. They- they wouldn't do that! They've changed!" 

Well... what was she supposed to say to that?


	13. The Warp Depot

Peridot's mind raced. Pieces were falling into place. 

It was the Diamonds. It had to be the Diamonds. 

They had means- they had _Sapphires,_ so they could make _subtle_ plans, plans that they could know wouldn't be detected, as long as they didn't make any mistakes. And the Diamonds- refusing to admit that they could make mistakes was more or less their primary mode of operation. They had access to humans, they had access to exotech, they had every imaginable resource at their disposal. It would take serious effort to explain how anyone else could've accomplished what happened. It took no effort at all to explain how the Diamonds would've accomplished it. 

They had motive- they had _Steven._ For him, they'd been willing to dismantle a vast interstellar empire- something they actually _cared_ about. How much more willing would they be to dismantle one little biosphere, if they could make sure Steven would survive? They wanted _him-_ but they didn't want anything he wanted. Earth was something that came _between_ them and Steven, and if some external force removed Earth from the picture, they'd have exactly what they wanted. 

They'd had opportunity- more than one. 

"You'll see," Steven said, footsteps echoing down the halls. "They really have changed!" 

Garnet was silent, as usual. She probably knew what they were going to find. She probably didn't know what to say about it. 

"Maybe," Peridot said. "The warp pad is just up ahead. We'll be able to ask them soon enough." 

Connie gave her a worried look. Sort of... accusatory, too. Peridot could read it, because she'd put her prodigious brain to the task of perceiving the emotions of other people. It'd been monumentally difficult, but she was confident she'd developed something that surpassed fluency in the art of reading the mood. It was to be expected, given how brilliant she was. 

Connie didn't like this. And Connie... was probably smart enough to figure out what this was really about. Right? She... clearly, she'd come to the same conclusion, but perhaps she didn't follow exactly the same logic that led to this plan. Connie wouldn't know about the warp depot, but... surely she'd have considered something similar? 

If she didn't follow the logic, she was probably confused, and maybe worried that the plan actually _was_ the one she'd described- to use the high-access warp at the nearest warp depot to warp directly to White's ship and confront her directly. _That_ was a _terrible_ plan, and Connie would be right to be trepidatious about it. 

If she _did_ follow the logic, then she was worried about... what? How Steven would take the news? Really, now. There was that thing other people kept doing, where- after perceiving the emotions of others- they'd over-weight the valence of those emotions in their planning. They would... decide not to do things... because other people would feel bad about them. It was a truly baffling feature of humanity- and, also, a considerable number of gems who weren't as brilliant as her. 

"Stop." 

There it was. Garnet held up a hand. 

"Garnet? What is it?" Steven asked. 

"Something's wrong," she lied. 

* * *

_Earlier..._

"Garnet! There you are!" 

"Peridot," Garnet observed. "You look upset." 

"Well, obviously," Peridot snapped. "There's a lot to be upset about! But me being upset isn't important right now." 

"An unusual stance." 

"Yeah, yeah, I've undergone considerable character growth or something like that. That's not the point. The point is I need your help." 

"Not as unusual," Garnet observed. 

Peridot narrowed her eyes. "I'm more than capable of handling myself on my own. Usually. But this time, I have a problem that you, specifically, are crucial to solving." 

"Mm." 

"Now I know what you're thinking- what do I need? What could I be talking about? How are my skills uniquely suited to this task?" 

"I wasn't thinking any of those things," Garnet said. 

"Well, I'm going to answer those anyway. You know your future vision?" 

"I know of it." 

"That- well, sure. The point is, you have it. And what I want you to do is to use it, right now, to figure out what I'm going to ask you to do next." 

"Okay," Garnet said. 

"Okay," Garnet said. 

Peridot didn't respond. She just stared, tapping her foot impatiently. 

"...Well?" 

"I don't know," Garnet replied. 

Peridot grinned. "Excellent. That means this timeline is logically impossible, and I'm not going to spend too much time overthinking that because I'm pretty sure that throws it off." 

"That's not really how it works." 

"Whatever! This is a vision, is the point. Using my unparalleled determination and self-control, I resolved firmly to tell you what I wanted you to do, and then to not bother trying to do it afterwards- _conditional_ on you not acknowledging that I'd already told you in a vision. That's now. So we can talk freely, and we won't be overheard because it's literally not happening." 

"That sounds overcomplicated," Garnet pointed out. 

She cackled. "Oh, Garnet! I have not yet _begun_ to overcomplicate things!" 

"I see." 

"See, the reason we're talking like this has nothing to do with secrecy. I don't think we're being spied on, or anything like that. It'd be useful for those purposes, but the main reason we're talking in a vision is to cause _you_ to change _your_ future actions based on information acquired via future vision. The point is to disrupt the timeline, and invalidate the observations of other Sapphires." 

"I'm Garnet." 

Peridot waved away the objection. "Whatever. You know what I mean. The timeline Sapphires- such as the Sapphires employed by the Diamonds- observe? That's this timeline. They observe timelines unmodified by the effects of future vision. They aren't paying attention to this timeline specifically, but they'll know its outcome. And since, in this vision timeline, I don't intend to actually follow through with the plan I'm about to describe, they'll only see the timeline where I didn't make my move." 

"You're trying to evade a prophecy." 

"Not a prophecy! No specific prophecy! It's just _obvious_ that the Diamonds wouldn't have gone ahead with their plans if they knew I was going to _foil_ them with a brilliant scheme of my own! If it was just me, their Sapphires would have noticed that I ruined their plans, and the Diamonds would take steps to prevent my interference. Since they _haven't_ done that, it means that they _didn't_ notice me turning their nefarious plans to so many ashes. Meaning I _had_ to have done something like this to prevent them from noticing!" 

"Or you just fail," Garnet said, her expression remaining neutral. 

Peridot looked irritated. "Obviously I'm not going to _just fail._ I _succeed_ when I do things." 

"At times." 

"Yes, at times! At basically _all_ the times! I don't know how you haven't picked up on this yet." 

Garnet nodded. "It is a mystery." 

"Anyway!" Peridot said, whipping out her phone. "I have it all worked out. I technically only need you to be involved so that you can _be_ involved, thereby contributing temporal interference and masking our operations. We're going to take on the Diamonds, see- because they're the ones behind the recents attempts at the destruction of Earth. Step one: we take Steven to the warp depot..." 

"Step one," Garnet said. "We take Steven to the warp depot..." 

Peridot's smile was wide enough that, had her face been made of human flesh, she would've injured herself. 

* * *

"Something's wrong," Garnet lied. "There should be guards here." 

Connie looked around the warp depot. This was probably her first time in a place like this, Peridot guessed. When she'd visited Homeworld before, it was all via the Lion-Lars exotech bridge. Ordinary foot traffic- for short-range journeys in the local star cluster- all passed through the depot, a large facility containing various warp terminals with superior access rights. 

Garnet wasn't _completely_ lying. There _should_ have been guards here. Warp depots were ordinarily extremely _busy_ places, space stations staffed by technicians and enforcers to ensure assets were moved to appropriate destinations. The warp depot for the Pink Diamond Colonial Administration, though, was empty. 

Part of the reason was that there wasn't all that much in the local interstellar cloud for people to warp between. The depot's main warp had a low-mass jump route to Homeworld, sure, but the radial locations didn't contain much. Pink Diamond's colony hadn't been a crucial juncture for galactic logistics- in fact, if she'd understood the historical reports correctly, it was selected _specifically_ for not being close to anything important that an inexperienced child could potentially ruin. The few destinations it connected to were cookie cutter Dyson plants, exotic materials mining stations, and long-abandoned space stations Pink had brought along for offworld colonial operations. 

That said, Earth was no longer a... nowhere planet. It had, in fact, become a particular focus of the Diamond Authority, as it was home to one of its active members. It made very little sense for the local warp depot to still be abandoned _and_ still be in working order. They'd have either taken control of it or destroyed it, right? It was a way anyone and anything in the local interstellar cloud could make their way to Earth, and the Diamonds were nothing if not overprotective of Steven. 

There should have been guards. Except... there weren't any guards. And she'd already known that. Expected it, been correct. 

"Are they... on break, maybe?" Steven asked. 

"I don't think they _take_ breaks," Connie said. "At least, if I were designing a type of gem specifically to guard things, I wouldn't make them need to take naps." 

Steven frowned. "Really? Wouldn't that be... kind of mean?" 

"Huh?" 

"You'd create a living thing that couldn't take naps? That just guarded stuff all the time?" 

Connie looked puzzled. "Well- um, no, I guess I wouldn't, that's kind of messed up... I mean, not the naps part, but making someone who just existed to do a job... probably not? That's... I think I read about something like that in my Ethics in Technology textbook..." 

"Connie, I don't think you need a textbook to know how to do the right thing," Steven laughed. 

"Eeeennnnh," Connie said, grimacing. "I don't know, Steven. Sometimes things are complicated, especially when you're dealing with things like creating new forms of life. Like, would it be fine to make a guard who didn't ever want to nap or take breaks if they were just a robot? Where do you draw the line?" 

Steven rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Well... I guess... hm." 

"Like, if you _were_ making something that was just supposed to do a job, why would you also make it... want to _not_ be doing its job? Wouldn't it be better for it to _like_ its job, if it was going to do it all the time? Or is that... kind of self-serving logic?" 

He frowned. "Okay, okay, so maybe it's not always easy. But I know _you're_ the type of person who could make the right call, even if it's hard." 

Connie blushed and laughed. "I mean- that's sweet, but part of doing the hard stuff is reading about how to do the hard stuff in textbooks, isn't it?" 

"I dunno," Steven said. "I'm homeschooled, remember?" 

"Does Pearl not use textbooks?" 

"Oh, right... no, she definitely gives me lots of textbooks, but I've only read... maybe three of them?" 

"Well, maybe you should read more textbooks!" Connie said, putting her hands on her hips and sticking her tongue out at him. "Anyway, I was just saying, you know, _if_ I were an evil space dictator who didn't care about ethics, I wouldn't make guards who took breaks." 

"How do you explain Amethyst, then?" Steven asked. 

"How does _anyone_ explain Amethyst?" 

"Connie's right," Garnet said. "The guards don't go on break. They're missing." 

Peridot nodded. "By the looks of this place, they've been missing for a long time. It's abandoned." 

Steven looked around. "I thought this was the hub for the whole... colony. I know they're not doing... colony stuff, anymore, but how come they didn't start using it again after we made peace?" 

"Because this is the _old_ hub," Garnet said. "There's a new one out by Saturn." 

Steven, bless his heart, was still confused. "So... what are we doing _here?_ Did we accidentally go to the wrong one?" 

"Not at all," Peridot said, stepping up to a warp pad. "This place is old enough that they wouldn't have updated the access management. The _new_ warp depot probably doesn't have a direct line to the Headship, or at least not one the guards there wouldn't keep us from using. If White is avoiding you, we can't take that risk." 

"So you brought us here, instead," Garnet pretended to deduce. 

"Naturally. Let's go, everyone!" 

Connie, Garnet, and Steven stepped onto the warp with her, and she triggered the jump. 

One set of bright blue anime speed lines later, they arrived on another warp pad. 

"Whoops," Peridot said. "Wrong warp." 

Steven looked around the crumbling surroundings, recognition dawning. 

* * *

"Oh. H-hi." 

_"...You_ again?" 

"I- sorry, I can go- but, um, what are you doing here?" 

"What are _you_ doing here?" 

Steven gestured at his rake and Sports-ade Liquid Hydration bottle. "I, um, figured I'd clean this place up. It's a nice enough garden." 

She- laughed? It was a sad little sound that barely counted. _"Now,_ you want to clean this place up?" 

"I... um, sorry. I mean- I mean, no, why am I sorry?! I didn't even know about this place until... all that." 

"...Right. You're not her." 

"Y-yeah. So..." 

"But this is _her_ garden, isn't it? So whose garden is it now?" 

Steven looked at the rake in his hand, and then back at her. She was standing... right on top of a little patch of torn-up grass. 

"Um... you... came back here?" 

"Yeah." 

"I... um, can I ask why?" 

"Heheheh. Lookit you, asking for permission. You really _have_ changed." 

"I'm still not her." 

"...Yeah." 

They stood in silence for a little while. She still didn't make eye contact with him- just kept staring dead ahead. It dragged on for a few moments, Steven not sure what to say. 

"...Yellow's busy," she finally said. 

"Yellow?" 

"Yeah. The others needed her for something, and... she _wanted_ to stay and play. I think. That's... I don't know, maybe I'm stuck assuming that. But... I think I'm right, this time." 

"That's nice," Steven said, smiling weakly. 

"So I'm waiting. This is where I wait." 

Steven laughed nervously. "I kind of thought you'd be... sick of waiting here. The same scenery. Reminding you of... that." 

"Ha. Hehe. Yeah." 

More silence. 

"You see that?" she asked. 

"That pillar?" 

She nodded. "That pillar. It rotates, did you know that? The bit where it floats off the ground a bit, it turns. Slowly. Makes a full revolution every five hundred years or so." 

"W-wow. I never would've guessed." 

"The other one used to turn. It stopped about nine hundred years ago, I think. Since then, the other one has been the only thing that moved. Besides the plants, I guess." 

"Are the plants... slower than the pillar?" 

"No, they're faster, I guess... but there's nothing else alive here, just the plants and the starlight. They didn't need to move or spread seeds, so they found a comfortable spot about fifteen hundred ago and haven't done much since." 

"O-oh." 

"That scratch there-" Steven couldn't see exactly where on the pedestal she was pointing- "-there used to be a rosebush vine, reaching out. Slowly making that mark. Only took a few years before that one withered, but it was an exciting time. Something changing." 

"I... see." 

Silence stretched. 

"...you really wouldn't rather wait somewhere else? Talk to someone? Make friends?" 

"..." 

"It just sounds like... if you're here, with this familiar sort of pain, there's probably something you're, um... trying to get away from. That this is... um, preferable, to." 

"...Maybe." 

"I mean... I shouldn't- I can't really be here to... I don't think either of us want to relive... any of that. But if you're feeling bad-" 

"I'm not feeling bad." 

"O-OK." 

He watched the stars above the warp pad. She watched in the direction of the stars above the warp pad. The quiet went on for long enough for him to lose track of time. 

A stomach gurgle broke the silence. 

"What?" 

"Uh, sorry." 

"No, what did you say?" 

"I- no, that was my stomach. It made a noise because, I guess I'm hungry." 

"Your what? Hungry?" 

"Sheesh... um. I guess I have to go, is the thing. But... I don't know, if you're hurting, you probably shouldn't..." 

"Stay in my garden?" 

He wasn't sure what to make of that. _Her_ garden? Was that... psychologically healthy for her? He... was that, um, reclamatory, or... was this more of a form of self-harm? What was she really thinking? 

...He couldn't let himself worry about that anymore. She needed- _wanted-_ to handle this on her own. 

He took his rake, leaving the Sports-ade on the grass by her feet, and took the warp home. 

* * *

"This is... Spinel's garden. The one where Mom..." 

"Left her," Connie finished. "This was where she waited, right?" 

"...Yeah," Steven said. Spinel was nowhere in sight, though Steven kept looking around on the ground for something. He didn't seem to find it. "I guess... thousands of years ago... when she left for the first time..." 

"Right," Peridot said. "This place is connected to the old warp depot, not the new one. But- hey, that's probably not important! I mixed up the warps, is all. Let's go back and take the right one." 

Steven was silent for a moment- a little too long- before nodding and stepping back onto the warp. 

They warped, and once again they were in the darkness of the old warp depot. "This way!" Peridot said, leading the charge. 

"Wait," Steven said, after following her down a hallway a bit. "There's something on the ground." 

"On the ground?" Connie asked. "What is it? I don't see it." 

Steven kneeled down. "It's... look," he said, gesturing at an empty patch of floor. 

Except, of course, that patch of floor wasn't empty. There was a little bit of dirt on the floor- organic material and fragments of stone. Some trace plant matter. It was, in just about every way, ordinary dirt. 

"...There's no dirt in space," Connie whispered. "Someone's been this way." 

"Spinel's been this way," Steven said, realizing. He turned around and looked at the ground they'd covered more closely- and sure enough, the tiny traces of dirt grew ever so slightly more dense as the footprints- eventually they could tell they were footprints- approached the warp pad from which they'd just come. 

Peridot knew that, of course. She'd checked beforehand. Of course someone standing in a garden for thousands of years would have some dirt on her feet when she left. 

"Spinel?" Peridot asked, feigning surprise. 

"She... was here. Before she came to Earth." 

Peridot quietly awarded Steven ten detective points. It might've been more, but she'd specifically led him down this path so he'd notice. 

Conveniently, without prompting, Steven began following the footprints in the other direction- the direction Spinel had gone after emerging from the warp. She'd gotten him hooked. She started following behind- Steven's curiosity would get him the rest of the way. 

She felt a hand on her shoulder and flinched. 

"Be gentle," Connie whispered, behind her. "This is going to hurt him." 

Peridot set her mouth in a hard line. "If the truth is going to hurt him, then he's going to need to be hurt." 

"Be _gentle,"_ Connie repeated. "Try." 

She sighed. "Fine."


	14. Wait. Hang On. This Doesn't Make Any Sense.

"O-oh." 

The room- which had been unlocked, for some reason, she hadn't had to reprogram the doors- was extremely large. It wasn't an ordinary warp room- it _had_ warps, but they were smaller, internal. For moving around cargo. Most of the room was empty space- and one wall, save for a rickety old atmospheric barrier, was missing. There was a majestic view out into more empty space. 

That which wasn't empty space was occupied by _objects._ Old-fashioned vehicles, incomplete machinery, giant weapons... stuff. Things that needed to be stored or moved somewhere else. 

Some of those things- taking up the whole left-hand wall of the storage hangar- were colossal planetary injectors. Hot pink toxin swirled in the chambers of several of them, while others appeared to be empty. 

And where one injector should have stood, there was instead, amidst undone mooring, yet more empty space. 

Steven stared. "This is where..." 

"This is where she kept the planet killers," she said, matter-of-factly. 

Connie glared at her. Right, right, the... gentle. 

"Er, among other things. Not _just_ the planet killers. It's sort of a big-things-storage room." 

"...Wh... why?" Steven asked. "Why would she _have_ those?" 

Connie quirked an eyebrow. "Why _would_ she have those? Why would _any_ of the Diamonds have those? A weapon that destroys a planet's lifeforce... as far as it makes any sense to talk about 'a planet's lifeforce', I mean... don't you _need..._ whatever that resource is, to make gems? Destroying it all at once... why?" 

Peridot chuckled. "Oh, it's not as bad as all _that._ These things are built to just wipe out _surface_ life, the stuff at the top of the crust. It'd take a lot more toxin than that to wreck a whole planet core-deep. It _is_ kind of a waste, though- they used these back when we still sometimes had trouble subduing terrestrial species prior to kindergarten operations. Nowadays, we have much more efficient methods of planetary sterilization." 

"Why," Steven repeated, "would she _have_ those?" 

Peridot shrugged. "They were standard-issue colonization equipment for the time. She'd have had to go out of her way to get rid of them, and they would've been keyed to her signature so no one else could use them. I doubt she worried about the junk lying around this place." 

Connie sighed. "It's... still weird to hear you talking about planet-destroying weapons like they were... unwanted office supplies." 

"She would've..." Steven said, then shook his head. "...No. She wouldn't have gotten rid of them, would she?" 

"Uh-" 

Steven threw his hands up. "AaaaaaaAAAAAGH! Mom!! All that dirt I had to spit out is YOUR fault!" Steven shouted at his belly button. "All those breath mints! All those dentist appointments!" 

"Not quite," Peridot said, prompting another warning glare from Connie. 

"...Huh?" 

Peridot stepped over to a pedestal by one of the empty injectors, and laid one hand on a hand-shaped depression too big for her. As expected, it lit up, and the enormous metal moorings securing the injector against the wall began groaning as they swung outwards. The injector's legs sagged slightly under its weight, before adjusting their balance and settling into position. 

Steven jumped, probably a little harder than he meant to given the reduced gravity on the station. Garnet gently tugged him back down to the ground. "Wh-whoa! Peridot, don't! That thing- I mean, it's empty, but what are you doing with that?!" 

"Nothing," Peridot said. "I mean, I _could_ do something with it- I just gained full access to the associated control console and internal commands, but... I don't plan to do anything at all with something so dangerous." 

Connie was silent, but watchful. She'd probably have some kind of criticism about this no matter _how_ she handled it, but fine. She'd be careful. _Gentle._

"Then... why?" Steven asked. 

"Well, Steven," she said, shrugging. "Did _you_ authorize me to do that? Did _you_ tell the injector that Peridot Facet-2F5L Cut-5XG was authorized to unmoor and launch it?" 

He looked lost. "Um, no..." 

"And did Rose?" 

He looked even more lost. "...No? You never even met her, did you?" 

She nodded. "Exactly. Neither you nor Rose authorized me to do what I just did." 

Steven narrowed his eyes. "So you _hacked_ it." 

"I didn't hack it, Steven. It simply responded to my instructions- full access permissions. Anyone could use it, not just you and Rose. Why else do you think Spinel was able to take one and reprogram it to obey her... um. Her... twisty... finger... noise... thingy?" 

Steven's jaw opened, then closed again. He seemed to be on the verge of figuring something out... did he get it? 

"So... wait, no. Mom... why would she do that? She... wouldn't, right? I can totally see her just kind of... leaving it lying around, like she left so many other superweapons lying around... but..." 

Peridot nodded. "But if it was already secured, why unsecure it? That'd just be _asking_ for trouble, right?" 

Steven's face was all scrunched up, deep in thought. "So why would she..." 

Connie sighed. "I get it," she said. "Stop messing with him already." 

"Look, _you_ said to be gentle! I'm breaking it down step-by-step so he has time to process it! You want me to just, what, blurt it out? I _wanted_ to just blurt it out!" 

"Wait, what?" Steven asked. "Blurt what out? Gentle? What?" 

Connie sighed. "Steven... your mom _didn't_ unsecure the injector. You can't think of any reason she'd do that, right?" 

"I... wait, I don't get it. She had to, right? Nobody else could!" 

Peridot crossed her arms. "Oh, so when _you_ ask leading questions to get him to figure it out himself, that's fine? Gimme a break!" 

"Ugh!" Steven shouted. "What's this all about?! What's this big secret? Why are you all dancing around it like I'll freak out if you tell me?!" 

Connie facepalmed. "Okay- sheesh. I'm sorry. The point is, Spinel shouldn't have been able to take the injector. She didn't have access, so someone had to _give_ her access. But not your mom, and not you, so... it had to be someone with higher access than _she_ did. Right?" 

Steven groaned. "Is this about White? Are you _still_ trying to convince me she's got some crazy evil plan?" 

"She _had_ a crazy evil plan," Peridot said. "She made sure to send your broadcast to Spinel's garden, where she'd flip her lid and start plotting revenge. Then, all she had to do was unlock the storage hangar, plant a rejuvenator in there, remove the access protection on the injectors, and let Spinel put two and two together. _You_ foiled that plan by being an excellent kisser." 

Connie turned red. "That- that...! How do you-" 

Steven laughed nervously. "She's talking about-" 

"Right! Right, no, I got it! That- of course. That's- because of the poison. Right," Connie said, straightening her collar. 

Steven took a step forward. "Listen, Peridot... that's all just a theory, right? Just because it lines up... it's not the only explanation. Like... I mean, what if it was just a malfunction? Whatever the... access... permissions... computer thingy for the injectors was, it just broke! It's been sitting here for thousands of years, maybe it just had a bug!" 

"If you want me to give you a crash course in Gem hierarchical access control and crystalline computing architecture, to explain exactly why that makes no sense-" 

"-or maybe Spinel hacked it! _You_ hacked the doors in this place!" 

_"Spinel_ isn't a technician. And the doors leading to this hangar I didn't _have_ to hack, which I think speaks for itself." 

"Yeah! Spinel _isn't_ a technician! She's a _comedian!_ A master prankster! A master prankster who had over six thousand years to sit around thinking of prank ideas! Are you _that_ sure she couldn't get around this security that _you_ called primitive, like, twenty minutes ago?" 

Peridot frowned. "...Maybe. But the odds aren't favorable." 

"And- and- it's not just that! This _new_ conspiracy theory, it's... it doesn't make any sense!" 

"Explain." 

Steven sighed. "Look, the Diamonds... they're not... I know I'm saying they've changed, but they still... there's still some things they're working on, you know? Like... um... caring about- no, uh, even _noticing_ the emotions of other people. They just... kind of don't keep track of that." 

"Well, that's..." 

She grimaced. She almost said "normal", but it was normal _because_ that was how they did things. The emotions of subordinates weren't supposed to matter, but... no, Steven had the right of it. The whole reason he'd gotten _this_ far was being in tune with people's emotions. It was useful. 

"...well, what does that have to do with anything?" 

Steven crossed his arms. "You're trying to tell me that... the _Diamonds..._ emotionally manipulated Spinel. By... paying attention to her thoughts and feelings, long enough to come up with a plan that relied on them." 

Connie suddenly looked uncertain. "That... _is_ a really good point." 

Wh- wait, what? "Hold on. Hold on hold on hold on. That's not-" 

Steven pointed a finger back in the direction of the warp pad. "The thoughts and feelings she _wasn't expressing_ to anyone, because she was all alone for six thousand years standing perfectly still in the garden." 

Well... well, that was... 

"Hold on," Connie said. "What about... what if they didn't need to? Like... don't they have Sapphires who can tell the future? What if they just... _saw_ that Spinel was going to attack you? And then they just gave her some stuff to make that attack go really bad for us?" 

"Yes! That's it!" Peridot said, pounding a fist into her palm. _"Obviously_ the Diamonds weren't planning around Spinel! That's why it took them two years to try something like that- they must've been waiting for an opportunity!" 

Steven didn't look impressed. "You don't think they could've found _anyone_ else whose life my mom ruined?" 

Garnet flinched. "Oh, Steven..." 

Steven shook his head. "No, it's okay. I- I'm used to it, now. She... that was just something she did without even thinking about it, I guess. But- what I mean is, if they were going to do that, they could've done it earlier! Lapis, Bismuth, Spinel- those are all people we found without even looking. It wouldn't take that long!" 

"...Hm." 

Steven had a point. Why wait two years before trying these sorts of things? Because they were clearly trying them _now-_ two such attacks in the span of a month. Was there some inciting incident? Steven's message to the universe, maybe? Maybe that was some kind of long-term plan? 

"...Well, what if they only decided to do that recently? What if Plan A was... dismantle space empire, make Steven so grateful he'd agree to stay on Homeworld?" 

Steven blanched. "...What?" 

"Your speech- that whole event- did that go as planned, do you think?" 

"As... planned?" 

Peridot nodded. "Were they happy with it? Were they expecting you to say what you said?" 

Steven hesitated. "...Um... yes? I guess? They, uh, they saw the script beforehand, I think..." 

"Oh. Never mind, then. If something hadn't gone according to plan, then... well, whatever." 

Steven somehow didn't look happy about winning that argument. 

"...Well, anyway," he said, "all that stuff about Sapphires, and telling the future... if they were just doing that, then how come their plans _failed?_ We _stopped_ Spinel, and _they_ stopped Aquamarine. If you think they can really just make perfect plans with future vision, then that doesn't make any sense!" 

Peridot adjusted her visor. "Sapphire predictions aren't perfect- especially not when other Sapphires are working at cross-purposes," she said, gesturing at Garnet. 

"I'm Garnet," she said. 

Peridot groaned. "No, I- I _know_ that, I mean future vision interferes with future vision! Garnet helped fight back against Spinel and Aquamarine, so that could've thrown things off." 

Steven groaned too. "Peridot, they _know_ about Garnet. They wouldn't use future vision plans like that if they knew she would get in the way! They'd know it wouldn't work!" 

Connie looked confused. "Wait, but... didn't it? I mean... the injector went off, and... if it hadn't been for your power, life on Earth could've ended. And now, I mean, they 'stopped' Aquamarine, but we're still dealing with the plague... if it _was_ a plan by the Diamonds, then they sure got pretty close." 

Peridot snapped her fingers. "And even with her future vision, Garnet didn't actually manage to interfere that much. If they made sure she didn't know what was happening until it was too late, they could get around that interference!" 

"I interfered a good amount," Garnet said, a trace of a pout in her voice. 

Steven closed his eyes. "So let me get this straight. What you're saying happened... is that for two years, the Diamonds _didn't_ try to destroy humanity, and then for- um, for _no reason,_ decided to suddenly start destroying humanity one day, and they did that by predicting the future and seeing that someone would just _happen_ to want to destroy all humans, and then... hacking an old abandoned space station so that she could have weapons to do it. And that prediction mostly worked, except that they somehow messed up their magical prophecies and forgot that I could heal things. And then after _that_ didn't work, they somehow got _Aquamarine_ to try the same thing a few weeks later, except _that_ didn't work _either_ because they showed up to foil their own plans. And they decide to do all this _after_ dismantling their huge space empire to show that they weren't evil planet-conquerors anymore." 

Peridot stared. 

"When you put it that way, it sounds like it's completely wrong," Garnet observed. 

"N-no! Connie, back me up here!" 

Connie shrugged. "Well... there's still things that look suspicious, like the way they got here so fast just now... but I don't know. It doesn't sound as ironclad as it did when you brought it up before." 

Steven nodded. "It's not ironclad. It's- they've probably got a good explanation for that. That's why we're going to go _talk_ to them and have them explain what happened." 

"N-no! That'll tip them off! Look, it all adds up...!" 

Steven, eyelids lowered, gave Peridot a look. "Does it 'all add up' the same way it 'all added up' that Paulette was a deep-cover agent for the red faction who was planning to feed Pierre to the lake sharks?" 

"YOU SHUT UP! That's _canon!_ You know as well as I do that the NEW WRITERS they hired for season 5 threw out the whole story bible and rewrote _everything_ to make NO SENSE! You _can't trust Paulette!"_

"Okay," Steven said. "Okay." 

"I'M RIGHT!!" 

"Okay." 

"Wait, is this about Camp Pining Hearts?" Connie asked. 

"EVERYTHING is if you THINK about it!!!" 

"I... didn't think it was that deep," Connie said. "I only watched a couple episodes, though..." 

Steven snapped his fingers. "Oh, everyone knows CPH gets good after episode 5." 

"THE POINT! IS!!!" Peridot croaked, getting her flailing arm movements under control, "sometimes people plotting things hide things from view so you don't figure them out!" 

Steven sighed. "Peridot... if you really think they're... up to something, what do you even want to do about it? You're saying I shouldn't talk to them? When that's... the way I've solved almost all of my problems?" 

"I... think we should have a _backup plan_ if negotations break down, is all." 

"What kind of back-" 

Connie held up a hand. "Hold on." 

Peridot turned. "Connie?" 

"Steven- Peridot- you're going about this all wrong." 

They looked at her with equal expressions of confusion. "Huh?" 

Connie poked at the bridge of her nose for some reason. She wasn't totally sure what that was about. "See... we're having this _argument_ about what's happening, as if we already had all the facts and it was just a matter of _convincing_ each other. That's... not how you go about figuring out the truth." 

"I don't follow," Peridot said. 

"I'm saying... if we're not sure, we should gather more evidence. There are still ways we can find out more, right?" 

Steven looked puzzled. "By... asking them, right?" 

"No, no," Connie said. "We don't need to ask _them-_ not yet. There's still someone we can question- see if their story matches ours." 

"Oh," Garnet said. 

"Someone who's just been bubbled and sent to maximum-security prison, yes," Connie said. 

"You're suggesting..." 

Connie grinned. "I mean, jailbreaks are _fun."_


	15. Jailbre4k

"...It wasn't her." 

Peronnie nodded- which was kind of useless because she was invisible, so she moved a mirror first and then nodded. 

"How could you tell?" she asked. "Were the gems in different places? 

Pearl- well, technically- well, no, yes, also Pearl, didn't Steven give her another name?- sighed. "No, it just... it wasn't her. It wasn't my Aquamarine." 

"It's sort of a magic Pearl thingy," Steven explained. "Volley remembers the, um... what was it?" 

"Personal signature," she- Volleyball, that was it, there was probably a story there- said. "My old memories are back, but I still have the new ones. I can remember what it was like to talk to her, and that... just wasn't her." 

"Are you sure?" Pearl- the actual Pearl- asked, from inside Peronnie's mirror capsule. "I mean, _I_ don't have any lingering attachment to- um." 

"Um-Greg Universe?" 

Pearl shuddered. "Don't remind me." 

Volley tilted her head. "You don't recognize him on sight?" 

"Wh- of course I do!" Pearl sputtered. "I mean, we're- we're friends, we've known each other for years, of course I know what he looks like!" 

Volley nodded. "Yet if someone were to impersonate him, surely you'd be able to tell it was a fake." 

Pearl shuddered again. "Oh, _that's_ not a pleasant thought." 

That made a lot of sense- herself, she didn't know much about Pearl specs, but Pearls were typically entrusted with some measure of executive power on behalf of their, um... owners? Skeezy turn of phrase; she needed a better one. Anyway, as shapeshifting was a basic gem capability, it made sense that Pearls would have finely-tuned senses for recognizing their... imprints? Was that a good word? That was maybe a little too Twilight. Anyway, it probably helped avoid taking orders from fakes. 

"So it's plan B, right?" Steven asked. 

"Does it need to be?" Peronnie asked. "Peridot predicted this might happen. And why would it happen... unless they were trying to keep her from you? Unless they had something to hide?" 

Steven gave an exasperated sigh. "Because we _have_ to talk to her. If this is a misunderstanding, we need to clear it up." 

"Okay, okay," Peronnie said. "I was kind of hoping we'd get to try this, anyway." 

"You mean...?" 

"That's right- it's makeover time!" 

It was, in fact, makeover time. Pearl stepped out of the mirror capsule, and Peronnie fanned it out a bit to hide them from the guards. She'd found a blind spot in the cameras where they could do a quick switcheroo, but they needed a little more room. Steven moonwalked a bit as she rotated the mirrors targeting the nearest camera, and that was just about all the space they needed to conduct their operation. 

To conduct a prison break and get away with it, they needed to conduct a prison break in such a way that no one had any idea a prison break was taking place. What this meant was that- while the prison break was taking place- the principal suspect behind any attempted prison break, Steven, needed to be seen not doing anything. If things went south, they needed to have ironclad evidence that Steven wasn't involved. 

So, it was makeover time. They'd seen Steven and Pearl step out of sight of the guards, and Steven and Pearl needed to come right back moments later. 

Step one- Volley entered the blind spot. She handed Pearl the eyepatch she'd been wearing, and Pearl put it on and stepped out of the blind spot. Volley, who'd been slightly shapeshifted and carefully-painted to look like Pearl, then returned to her original form, the dried paint flaking off. At the conclusion of step 1, Pearl now perfectly matched the Pearl-disguise Volley had been wearing during the visitation with the fake Aquamarine. 

Step two- Volley shapeshifted to the regulation form-factor for a game of Steven Tag. The natural chalk-white of her skin matched the powder Steven had caked all over his face, but the hair had been trickier to do in testing. Dye didn't adhere to gem hair very well, and Steven's own black hair was too dark to dye bright pink. They'd ended up going with a wig, shapeshifting "skin" through and over the net so it looked natural. The effect wasn't quite perfect, but Steven had been more than willing to style his own hair to match. And they probably weren't going to lift up his shirt, but they'd brought along a plastic craft store gem for her belly button anyway. 

Step three- defying orders. Connie had been told that she was too young to use makeup- which she thought was ridiculous, since she was already 15, and she was old enough to go around fighting aliens with a sword. There was no rule against _Peronnie_ using makeup, though, and since Connie had watched hours of TubeTube tutorials so that she'd be ready when she finally _was_ old enough, she was well-equipped to carefully inspect Volley and Steven's faces and paint over any discrepancies in coloration. 

Step four- Steven entered the blind spot, handed Volley his wraparound shades, and climbed in the mirror capsule with Peronnie. A split second later, Volley donned the shades, stepped out, and the end result was... 

Absolutely no visible change. Pearl stood there, wearing an eyepatch, and 'Steven' stood there wearing wraparound shades. The cameras had seen Pearl and Steven stand in the hallway, each of them walking out of view for a split second and then walking straight back, not having changed in any apparent way. 

Onto phase 2. 

'Steven' and Pearl headed back the way Steven and 'Pearl' had come, back to the lobby where the guards were expecting them. From there, they'd remain in the lobby, 'Steven' taking a nap on the comfy lobby chair Steven had made such a show of wanting to nap on earlier. There, they'd be watched- no one would be wondering where they were, if maybe the people they were supposed to keep from getting into the prison had found a way inside. The security in charge of this facility would be keeping a close eye on them, being very sure of Steven Universe's exact location. 

Steven Universe's exact location, now, was riding on Peronnie's shoulders inside an array of carefully-positioned floating mirrors. They'd tried fusing beforehand, in hopes of conducting this heist as some sort of... Stevonnidot... but it hadn't gone great. Peridot and Steven had both been hoping for different outcomes to the operation, and Connie's indecision didn't serve to stabilize anything. So... it was a piggyback ride. 

Now... getting into the real holding cells. That would be the tricky part. 

Given that Triclinic Larimar existed, and at least one had been lost on Earth (Steven had mentioned an invisible gem monster on an island, which was probably the one in question), the idea of an invisible or otherwise stealthy infiltrator wasn't totally unheard of. The Diamonds occasionally made use of them in petty disputes, so anything designated "Maximum Security" was going to have countermeasures for invisible foes. 

The minimap: an emptied-out ant farm let over from a tragedy that once struck a seven-year-old Connie. Queen Formicida and her retinue had escaped, taken over the house, and then been killed by a team of chemical weapons specialists at the behest of a terrified Priyanka- but their ancestral home would yet prove useful. Filled with baby oil and iron filings, and then sealed shut, it made for a convenient way to project a cross-section of a three-dimensional map when you had metallikinesis instead of holoprojection. With this, Steven could handle navigation while she focused on keeping an eye on the array of mirrors to maintain stealth. 

Even in maximum-security Diamond prisons, built with access to all varieties of high-grade construction crystal, metal parts were still scattered all about. There simply hadn't been a _need_ to conceal floor plans from enemies who could map entire facilities by sensing perturbations in magnetic fields. Consequently, control panels and various forms of system wiring running throughout the facility gave her a pretty good idea of what she was looking at. 

It'd been immediately suspicious when _her_ map didn't match the _posted_ map they showed Steven. 

The official map of the facility depicted a one-floor layout, a squarish complex on the surface of an inert asteroid. Each side was roughly 300 met- 2.5 trillion hydrogen dia- whoa. Okay. What system of measurement did she use? Whatever. It was pretty big, but all aboveground. It appeared to be modeled after Earth prisons, featuring an external wall surrounding cell blocks and a large prison yard. When they arrived via the ship provided by Blue Diamond, they'd seen gems in manacles and stripey outfits swinging pickaxes at rocks down in the yard, and they'd passed through a cell block featuring barred cells to get to the visitation room. 

She hadn't needed to _tell_ Steven that this made no sense. Gems could shapeshift through the gaps in bars, or fuse large enough to step over walls. They could be poofed and bubbled, meaning there was no reason to keep them in cells in the first place. That this place so perfectly mimicked a high-security prison for humans... at first, they'd thought maybe it was a really obvious trick, but no- the Diamonds weren't dumb. 

No, when they asked the Agate in charge of their visit, she had cheerfully explained that this facility had been recently constructed in accordance with Steven's policy of changing everything to be like the way it was done on Earth, where everything was of course much more humane. Steven's Excalibur-face was very- well, huh. Wait, what? Oh, huh. Apparently- which is to say, of course, because she knew why- Peridot _did_ know what Excalibur-face was. Right? Was that how it worked? When had Peridot seen Soul Eater? It was hard to disentangle those memories. 

Anyway, Steven had resolved to see about reforming the Earth _and_ gem prison systems as soon as possible... but regardless, it _was_ a feint. The Diamonds likely _had_ built this place to appease Steven's sensibilities as described, but... that was the only reason it looked like that on the surface. Fake, staffed by actors. 

_Under_ the surface, which Peronnie could see clearly, there were several more floors of a more traditional containment facility. 

So... a list of the steps. 

**1:** Find an entrance to the lower levels and sneak inside, leveraging invisibility to get past any further security. There were a few promising candidates for access, but her power wasn't telling her exactly which bits of metal in the floor indicated lifts and which bits of metal in the floor were just leftover construction scaffolding or something. They'd need to get eyes on each of the potential access points. 

**2:** Find where Aquamarine was being kept, if she was in fact being kept here at all, rather than at another location or shattered outright. That might require finding a directory of some kind, since lower-level prisoners were likely in bubbles inside stacks of locked boxes. 

**3:** Access Aquamarine's containment without being noticed by security, as Steven showing up in two places at once would look very suspicious to security. They couldn't afford to be noticed- she didn't totally understand prophecies and time travel, but the ideal timeline was the one where they got away with this because the Diamonds' Sapphires never saw anything go wrong, rather than one where it seemed like they were getting away with this until a trap was sprung. If there was any disturbance, even one that could be plausibly blamed on something else, it could result in retroactively increased scrutiny on their activities. Probably. That was probably how time worked. 

**4:** Sneak Aquamarine's component gems out of the facility. It was... _probably_ not a good idea to release and interrogate her inside, where she might decide to attack them and almost certainly blow their cover. Steven was there to talk her down in case there was some kind of containment breach. 

"That one first," Steven said, pointing at a room in the corner of the map. 

"On it," Peronnie said. 

* * *

So... a list of how all of the steps went wrong. 

**1:** There was no entrance to the lower levels. Why would there be? The upper level was just a facade, meant to distract from the lower levels. It wasn't _part of the facility-_ no one should have been going back and forth between them. The lower level was probably accessible only via local warp, not by some staircase an inquisitive Steven might stumble across. And without access to a prison ship _containing_ a local warp to the enclosed lower level, there was no way in and out of the true holding facility. Getting in, then... that required _making_ a way in. 

Thankfully, it was a _small_ asteroid, and sneaking out of the decoy facility and drilling in by force wasn't too difficult. Still... the hole left behind, that was going to attract attention eventually. 

  


**2:** Aquamarine probably _was_ being kept there, and they _had_ been able to invisibly snoop on a manifest a Peridot had left open at a terminal. That was about as good as news got, though, because... well, the manifest didn't list locations for specific prisoners. After all, it wasn't like they needed to retrieve specific prisoners for any reason. If you were convicted of a crime on Homeworld and were lucky enough not to get shattered, there was no need for rehabilitative confinement or anything like that. They had rejuvenators, after all. Each imprisoned gem of a specific type was exactly as useful as any other- which is to say, slightly less useful than a freshly-grown gem whose rejuvenation wouldn't eventually wear off. 

So there was a bucket of Aquamarines, a bucket of Peridots, and essentially no order or labeling they could use to determine which was which. There were, conveniently, only three Aquamarines, since Aquamarines were typically high-ranking gems who ran and/or benefitted from the system and didn't often get convicted of crimes. Peridots, less conveniently, were _unusually_ prone to insubordination, which didn't surprise her at all. (It did, however, slightly offend her that she wasn't surprised at all. What _exactly_ were Connie's subconscious expectations trying to say, huh?!) 

  


**3:** Not getting noticed was... not quite a _cakewalk,_ but they had an advantage in that they had a perfect guard disguise available to them. The procedure was simple: first, they'd ambush a Peridot bubble storage technician with the same gem placement. A 5XJ, not a 5XG, but close enough. Connie and Peridot would unfuse, and Steven and Connie would hide inside 5XJ's storage locker while Peridot took the leftover limb enhancers as a disguise. Peridot would then access the convict storage troughs and grab a pair of bubbles. 

This part worked just fine, at first. The problem was identifying the correct gems, though, since the prison hadn't labeled them. Thankfully, they'd brought along a Real-Aquamarine-Detector, in a stroke of serendipity that would have been brilliant were said detector not under close observation back up in the decoy prison. Volley was disguised as Steven, and unfortunately they only had one way to contact her. On their way out with the correct Aquamarine and Peridot, they were supposed to invisibly return to the lobby and tap 'Steven' on the shoulder to indicate that they'd be boarding the Blue Diamond ship and leaving. Actually delivering a message- for instance, that the plan had changed and Volley needed to help them- was a little more fraught. 

They had Connie's phone, and 'Steven' had Steven's phone, but of course there were no cell towers on the prison asteroid. To deliver a message, they had one option- they could AirDrop a text file of instructions into Steven's phone, and hope Volley understood the workings of human technology well enough to understand that the notification sound meant she should check the phone and read the transmitted file. Plus, using AirDrop meant getting into Bluetooth range, which would mean sneaking back out of the facility multiple times, compounding the risks. 

One compounded risk later, Peronnie was on top of the lobby building, thirty feet or so above Steven's phone. She transferred the instructions to the phone, and... the part where everything failed was not that particular part. Pearl wasn't the only Pearl who was decent with technology, it seemed- 'Steven' checked the file transfer, and then looked up. 

Up on the roof, right outside the glass dome, mirrors were arranged so that- where Peronnie was holding a pair of bubbled gems- the guards standing around the edges of the room would see only reflected starlight. 'Steven' could look up at the ceiling, see the gems, and follow the instructions. Two thumbs down. 

One might think that the plan would fall to pieces during one of the subsequent twenty-three trips back and forth from the bubble troughs to the top of the lobby. After all, there were plenty of those unfamiliar white gems patrolling, Peridot technicians asking suspicious questions about why 5XJ kept accessing the troughs, and cameras that needed precise mirror angling to evade. Maybe one of the guards would get suspicious as to why 'Steven's' phone kept beeping for his attention, and maybe move out of position and see Peronnie on the roof with bubbles. Maybe someone would happen across the tunnel that'd been drilled into the supply closet. 

But none of those things happened. Peridot bluffed with the best of them, Connie's AP Geometry class ensured the camera angles were covered, and Peronnie didn't miss a beat while sneaking by guards. On the second trip, 'Steven' changed one thumb to a thumbs-up, indicating that they'd found the correct Aquamarine. On the twenty-third trip... 

  


**4:** 'Steven' didn't hold up any thumbs. Instead, he reached into his jacket, and pulled out... 

...some sort of frilly-looking magic wand with a ribbon on the end. And in the blink of an eye- considerably faster than the blink of an eye, given that it was the blink of an eye from Peronnie's perspective- that ribbon had shot up through the dome in the ceiling, sprayed Peronnie with broken glass, and wrapped itself around the two bubbles. Peronnie only had time to process the wild and desperate look in Volleyball's eyes before the bubbles were ripped from her hands and yanked back down into the lobby in a shower of broken glass. 

Pearl, who'd been standing right next to her, overcame her shock just in time to brandish her spear- and have it knocked out of her hand by an elegant kick. A shocked expression was beginning to form on the Agate's face. The guards ringing the room began to charge, and Peronnie was already halfway down into the room, mirrors cast aside to focus on pure speed. 

The flash of light as the bubbles popped was less disorienting than what happened next.


	16. Standard Operating Procedure

Oh, _yes._ She was _back!_ That fool Steven _fell_ for it! 

What had he _thought_ would happen? That Pearl's attachment to Pink Diamond- the attachment he'd gone out of his way to break for good- would reassert itself over her new attachment to her _Aquamarine?_ Foolishness. Perhaps _Steven's_ Pearl still preferred Pink to My Dad, but for Volleyball... it was no contest. Choose a raging, petulant child over the genius empress-to-be of the universe? An empress-to-be who _she_ got to be a _part_ of? 

"You're a fool, Universe!" she declared, the instant she had a mouth to declare it with. There were a handful of distractions, but they were no trouble. The Agate and her guards went down to a barrage of summoned canes easily enough, and the Peronnie and Steven remained conveniently full of water. And _this_ time, there'd be no last-minute rescue from White Diamond- hilariously enough, they'd made "ensure the Diamonds don't find out what's happening" an _explicit part of their plan._

"I just want to talk," Steven said. Of _course_ he just wanted to talk. When did he ever _not_ just want to talk? 

"You can talk when you're dead," she spat. 

"That's... totally not how it works," he pointed out. "And I know you're not going to kill me." 

"Oh, yeah?! And why not, hm? I only needed you alive when I cared about what the Diamonds thought. Now that you've _ruined_ my Plan A, Plan B is to declare war on the _entire empire!"_

"We're not an empire anymore," he said. "You need to get used to that." 

"Yes, you've conveniently dismantled most of their military for me, thank you. That _will_ make becoming Supreme Diamond of the Universe a great deal easier." 

"Also, you missed a spot," Steven said, pointing. 

"Wh-" 

Suddenly, there was a spear sticking through her chest. What- was that Pearl? Right, Pearl had been there- she must've disappeared with the rest of the guards. How had she snuck behind her, anyway? 

"I'm not mad, Volleyball," Pearl said from behind her. "Just disappointed." 

Peronnie, trapped in midair, groaned. "Oh, not again! Pearl, she- she doesn't poof from that, we're going to need another-" 

Impudent. Her wings flared, and she pulled them together with significant force. The water-wing-claw crushed her assailant, and both Pearl and her spear vanished with a poof of light. 

"...plan," Peronnie finished, cringing. 

She landed and dusted off her hands. Not that they were dusty, really, it was just an appropriately condescending gesture. "So, Steven. Now that I think about it, you're right. I _won't_ be killing you. You're still a valuable hostage, of cour-" 

She stopped talking when she finally made eye contact and saw Steven's face. That... that was a new one. That level of anger, it reminded her of- 

no 

no he was pink now 

and he was moving he wasn't frozen he was moving now 

no no no 

"I'm," Steven said, taking a step forward. 

what was this fear what was this what what what 

"Tired," he added, taking another step forward and that force inside him was stronger than her own hydrokinesis and he was taking step after step after step- 

"Of this," he finished, and the sound of thunder accompanied his fist as he punched her through a wall. 

Being punched through a wall was- well, Volley had experienced it before, but that time the wall had been comparatively thin. A decorative partition in Pink's third extra rec room. This time, the wall was the wall of a maximum-security gem prison. It was a distracting experience, as her mind ran fast enough to process each an every bit of rubble as it collided with her. It was almost enough to make her forget that more was coming. 

A hand wrapped itself around her throat, lifting her- not all the way off the ground, Steven wasn't as _tall_ as Pink, but up to a kneeling position. 

He was going to shatter her. She could see it in his eyes, and they looked so much like _her_ eyes now, she was going to shatter her...! 

"Steven! Are you okay?!" 

The Peronnie. The Peronnie was going to save her, delay him- 

He turned. "Oh! Peronnie, um. Yeah, I'm fine. This is like- I guess neither of you were around for this, but Jasper's been teaching me some anger management techniques." 

He... what? He- wasn't he out of control? 

Peronnie raised an eyebrow. "You've been learning _anger management_ from _Jasper?_ Isn't that like... learning how to breathe air from a fish?" 

"No no, yeah. I mean... techniques for, _managing_ to turn _anger_ into, like, a superpowered Hulk mode type thing." 

"Oh. That... sounds more like her." 

"Yeah, it-" 

Steven began to fade, and his grip started to weaken. Her chance...! 

"-wait, crud, hang on," he said, and suddenly turned back to her and gave her a death glare, the pink glow welling up again and his grip on her throat tightening. "I mean, RRRRRGH! You hurt Pearl! And also mutated like everyone on Earth! And I guess betrayed us just now! There's... lots and lots of reasons to be mad at you!" 

The pink was still flickering, though- he couldn't keep it up for very long. Stall, stall, she could stall! Calm him down, then strike! 

"Gak," she tried. The grip loosened, but it was still firm. 

"Seriously, what's wrong with you?! All that planning, and... I mean, why didn't you just wait until after we escaped? Now the Diamonds will come running, and... aaaargh!" 

"If they were- ghk- going to, they would've done it alrehhh," she managed to choke out. As convenient as air-pouch-based sonic communication was, she'd probably need to switch to direct frequency modulation if he was going to keep constricting her airflow. 

The pink flickered. "That's... I mean, I guess, but you didn't _know_ that! You put all our lives at risk!" 

_"Hah. Your_ life, at risk thanks to the _Diamonds?_ If I could laugh right now, I would," she squeaked out. Was his power waning enough to immobilize him again? He'd probably notice if she tested the waters, so to speak, and that might re-energize him. 

"That's... I mean, okay," he said. He looked... as confused as she was. Why _had_ he acted like the Diamonds were a threat to his life, when he was _their_ sweet little Steven? Didn't he trust them? 

"But- you didn't have to do this! We could've walked out of here, and then just... talked! But instead you had to attack everybody!" 

"Talked? Because we found so much common ground _last_ time we talked? Spare me." 

His power flickered again, and it seemed like he was beginning to take notice, because he sucked in a breath and summoned another wave of anger. "Listen, Aquamarine! You don't like me, and I- um, I guess I don't like you, but... um..." 

There it was- it was fading. He couldn't keep up the rage for that long. If he was like Pink, he'd be sputtering apologies within minutes. As soon as someone else's pain started to make _her_ feel bad, she'd find something to do about it. Steven was probably the same- all she needed to do was feign weakness. 

...Except she was _not_ going to give this wannabe child-tyrant one single hydrogen diameter. She wouldn't show weakness in front of _him._ That was _not_ on the table. 

"Aaaaaargh! Listen, this is stupid! You _know_ why we're here, Volleyball knew why we were here! Just answer the questions and we can get out of your hair!" 

"As if," she snarled. "You'll be out of my hair for ten minutes before looking back and deciding that I need to be stopped from living my life." 

Steven groaned. "You need to be _stopped_ from _killing people!_ You can't just decide that, that, that killing people is some kind of essential part of your life!" 

"You arrogant little- who do you think you are, to decide what I can and can't have be an essential part of my life?" 

Oh, whoops. That had been the wrong thing to say. The pink was back to full strength, now. 

"Um, Steven, are you sure you're up to this?" the Peronnie behind him asked. 

"I'm- of course I'm- I'm not stupid! I can handle this, Connie!" 

She winced. "Peronnie." 

"Ack- sorry." 

"We can analyze that Freudian slip later, I think, but... I don't know if she's going to listen to you like that." 

Steven's hands started to shake a little. She could tell, because they were on her neck. 

"Well, what do you _want_ me to do? The only language she seems to understand is... me beating her up! I... I don't _want_ to do it like this!" 

"Then _don't,"_ Peronnie said. "You have limits. You don't need to take care of everything yourself- especially if you get desperate and end up hurting yourself. And... other people." 

The pink kept going strong. "I... I... I know that! But if I don't take care of things, who will? Mom left me with all this power, and responsibility, and... and, you know, Spider-man!" 

Peronnie sighed. "Steven, just because you saved the universe doesn't mean you're the _only person_ who can save the universe. Even if you took a break, we could handle things." 

He flickered. This Peronnie might be about to free her, if this kept up. "I... but what if..." 

"I haven't really been involved- and neither have Connie or Peridot, for that matter- but they heard from the Gems how much trouble you've been having with Little Homeschool. It's a little hard to ignore." 

"I-" 

"You're not the only one who's grown over the past couple years, Steven. We've _all_ been getting stronger. You don't need to worry about... about losing us, if you don't protect us." 

Steven didn't say anything, and she couldn't see his face now that he was facing Peronnie. Still, the pink was starting to wane. Soon...! 

"Listen, Steven- let _me_ talk to her. I think I might be able to get through to her." 

"...okay, but... I don't know if I can keep this up. I need to stay angry, or else..." 

"Oh, don't worry about that. I have that covered- you've stalled plenty." 

A few different things happened at once. 

One of those things was that Steven mumbled "okay", let go of her neck, and returned to normal. 

Another one of the things that happened was that Aquamarine immediately lifted Steven into the air using the water inside his body, and filled the air with a whirling storm of holo-canes. 

(Judging from the pattern so far, you could be forgiven for imagining that all of the things that happened were good for her. This is not the case.) The third thing that happened was that the air suddenly turned into about a thousand different needles that turned her into a pincushion and rooted her to the ground. 

"Let's talk," Peronnie said, inching forward against the hydrokinetic stasis with her magnet powers. 

"You...! What is this?!" 

"I had time to think," Peronnie said, forcing herself into a sitting position across from her. "About what I did wrong when I was fighting you earlier." 

"That-" 

"I was too focused on going for the finishing blow, of course. Even after I realized how durable you were, I kept trying to think of ways I could get _through_ your durability, not _around_ it." 

"You'll pay for-" 

"But even that wasn't my real mistake! I had the wrong _goal_ there. I was trying to poof you, I was trying to _beat you in a fight."_

"That's impossible," she growled. "You're no Diamond. This trick won't hold me!" 

"That's true! I'm not, and it won't. Stupid of me, back then. I was drunk on power, and all I could think of was how to show that power off. I made a decision about an _instrumental_ goal, and lost sight of my _terminal_ goals." 

She tried to strain against the long metal needles holding her in place, but it was more difficult than it seemed. The needles were piercing her form's tension fibers in strategic locations, keeping her from applying torque to the joints and ensuring her immense strength would go to waste. Her shapeshifting ability was limited by her phase-5 structure, so... she'd have to use her wings to pull the needles out. 

"See, I didn't need to _beat_ you. All I needed to do was get Steven away from you. Imagine White didn't show up- if I'd done _this,_ held you in place, and then pushed Steven out of range of your power... he could've run off and freed our allies. Or maybe I could've held you there while he talked with you, or... the point is, I had options I didn't pursue because I was dead-set on accomplishing a feat that was, ultimately, pretty pointless." 

"Congratulations," Aquamarine spat. "You get a gold star for explaining in detail the ways in which you're a complete fool." Pulling the needles out was slow going- it was difficult to get traction on smooth metal with water. 

"Already have one," Peronnie said, pointing at her costume. "But that's not the point. I'm just saying... you can probably relate to that, right? You have a Peridot as a part of you, so I'm sure you know how it feels to get carried away with a spur-of-the-moment project." 

"So what?" she asked. "If you're trying to imply that _I_ made _mistakes,_ that's..." 

The Peronnie wisely decided not to laugh at that remark. "No, no. Not at- hh- of course not. Obviously. You've never actually made a _mistake,_ but there have been a few... let's call them 'stnanks', that could be worthy of a do-over." 

"Like what?" 

"Like... well, this all started... why? You wanted to terraform a planet, right?" 

"My _three-millennium bonus,_ yes. Do you have _any idea_ how it feels to work hard for three thousand years, and have you three-millennium bonus stolen from you?" 

"No, because humans don't live that long and Peridots don't get three-millennium bonuses. You know this." Peronnie pointed out. 

"E-exactly! You don't! You couldn't possibly understand how I feel!" 

"Well... you're half right. I _don't_ understand how you feel, but..." Peronnie paused, thinking. "...people aren't going to just understand your feelings by default. Getting people to understand your feelings is something _you_ have to do. If you're saying I can't possibly understand your feelings, then what you're saying is that _you_ can't possibly _make_ me understand." 

This impudent little...! "Watch your tongue, fool! You don't get to tell me what is and isn't impossible!" 

Peronnie forced her hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Okay, okay, fine! I'm sorry!" Was that a smile? "If you can make me understand your feelings, then do it! If you can, I'll accept that as proof of your abilities!" 

"What, not convinced?" she scoffed. "You want proof?! I'll _give_ you proof!" 

"Fine!" 

"One hundred years ago...!" 

One hundred years ago, Aquamarine had been called to meet with Blue Diamond for a performance review. Her service had been exemplary- Blue Diamond, her _Diamond,_ had personally commended her for her successful eradication of the underground deviant terrorist cell, the Rough Cuts. It'd been a close thing- she'd very nearly gotten the paint job on one of the killdrones scuffed in a particularly close encounter. But she'd pulled it off with aplomb, and so Blue Diamond elected to give her a sneak preview of her three-millennium bonus. 

The planet was perfect. 5.2e16 hydrogens in diameter, 32%Fe/30%O/15%Si/14%Mg, central location off the first ring Homeworld warp depot, luster-class life force concentration, and utterly defenseless host species. In every aspect, ideal- just like her. 

100 years, knowing that she would finally be rewarded for her service with a planetary administration position. Finally, power not only in service of a mission, but power of her _own,_ a planet to shape however she wanted! She just needed to wait one hundred years, making sure no mistakes were made. 

That planet hung beautiful in her mind for all that time. The light at the end of the tunnel, the prize she was to win for surpassing each and every one of her peers. It pulled her onward unceasingly. 

99 years later, she executed a mission completely perfectly, which was a mistake. She captured "Steven", who was secretly "Rose Quartz", and brought him to trial on Homeworld. And then- after some Ruby Goldberg machine of complete madness ran its course- "Steven", who was secretly "Rose Quartz", who was secretly Pink Diamond, cancelled the empire. 

Steven cancelled the colonization of planets. Steven cancelled the creation of kindergartens, cancelled the very procreation of their species. Cancelled her three-millenium bonus! He wasn't even a gem, not really- he was some lump of flesh which had _absorbed_ a gem, a member of some hideous alien culture that loved to cancel things. And Steven, armed with his cancel culture, took _everything_ from her. 

"So, hang on," Peronnie interrupted. "I get that. Waiting a long time for something and then not getting it, I can understand that. But... I guess I'm wondering, what _specifically_ about this planet did you want? Steven mentioned offering you a substitute, but you didn't seem interested." 

"A _substitute_ isn't the thing I was promised, that I waited for for a hundred years!" 

"No, yeah, but... what, are you saying, if Blue Diamond had promised you, I don't know, a cool hat, and Steven had something against hats-" 

"I don't have anything against hats! Does she want a hat?" 

"-I know, Steven, it's just an example. Aquamarine- would you have been as upset about it if it was just a hat? Was the important thing that Blue Diamond promised it to you, or did you want the planet for some other reason?" 

She scowled. "Blue Diamond wouldn't promise me a _hat_ for my three-millennium bonus." 

Peronnie sighed in exasperation. "Okay, bad example. What if it was, I don't know, command of a really big ship? Or a palace on Homeworld? Or... I don't know what kind of things Aquamarines are into, really. Something good, but not a planet." 

"It wouldn't be the same." 

"Why?" 

Why wouldn't it be the same? _Why wouldn't it-_

She activated her holoprojector, and brought up the plans. 

The room filled with a shimmering three-dimensional image of a planet. Not just any planet- the planet as it would be when _she_ was done with it. A spherical web of crystalline spires and bridges, dotted with majestic towers and ringed with planet-spanning rails of pure light. 

"Do you see this?! _This_ is the Ultramarine Cathedral!" 

Steven looked at it and grimaced. _"This_ again. Why-" 

He looked over at Peronnie and stopped. Her face was lit up with excitement. 

"Is that- oh my stars, it's got- the whole transportation network is...!" 

"Co- no, Peronnie- we've been over this," he said, facepalming. "Or Peridot and I have been over this. That's what they want the planet to look like _after_ they destroy all organic life." 

Peronnie briefly tore her attention away to give Steven a pleading look. "No- I mean, I _know_ that, you know I _know_ that, but- but _look_ at it! It's so _cool!"_

"See? See?!" Aquamarine said. "She gets it! Look, let me show you the striations I have planned for the main axial bridge, if I zoom in here..." 

She zoomed in on one of the support structures and displayed a cross-section. Peronnie's eyes widened, and she started poking at the hologram. "Is that- ohhhhhhhhhh wow, you've got the parallels doing double duty as the comm channels? Can you _do_ that?" 

"You can if you use the orbital rail system as a containment field," Aquamarine said, smirking. "Look." 

Peronnie stared as the hologram panned over to one of the rings around the planet, which was studded with refraction field generators. But not just any refraction field generators- _nice_ refraction field generators, intricately grown and carved to serve as decorations _and_ bases for maintenance personnel _and_ intermediate rail stops. 

"And look at this!" She panned over and zoomed into the base of one of the spires, where the magisterial palace sat. The crown jewel of her design, the fruit of her Peridot's architectural brilliance. Perfectly regular cubes of different materials, stacked together and arranged to create an enormous and elegant palace with elaborate detailing. 

"Okay, I'm starting to get it," Peronnie said. "You put a lot of effort into this, didn't you?" 

"Of course! I-" 

"Put a lot of effort into _destroying a planet,"_ Steven reminded her. 

Peronnie sighed. "Yes, Steven, I _know_ that. I'm getting to that!" 

"What do you mean you're 'getting to that'?" Aquamarine snapped. "You understand now, right? There's no way to create something like this using- using some dead _asteroid._ If this is going to work, I need a _proper_ planet." 

"That's-" 

"Well, too bad!" Steven cut in. "I don't know how to... explain to you that... making a real-life version of your Minecraft project isn't enough to justify killing the entire population of a planet! I don't care how cool it is!" 

What? "My... mine craft project?" 

"Don't worry about it," Peronnie said. "Look- Steven, you're _right,_ but... I don't think we have time for a whole peace-and-love-on-the-planet-Earth musical adventure right now. Sometimes you need to be able to work with someone _before_ they agree with your priorities. Even if maybe they'll _never_ agree with your priorities! Otherwise, you'll just keep wasting each other's time fighting each other." 

"I... guess..." 

"So you'll agree to give me a planet?" Aquamarine asked. 

"...Maybe?" Peronnie said. 

_"MAYBE?!"_ Aquamarine and Steven shouted in unison. 

"Maybe! Like... okay, so there's planets like Earth and, um, what was it again, Steven? [Indecipherable squealing noise]?" 

"No, [unintelligible squeaking noise]. I think. Some of those sounds are hard." 

"Right, [unintelligible squeaky sound]. Those kinds of planets are suffused with life force, which suppresses the atomic-rule breakdown and prevents the degeneration of organic molecules. But there's other planets _without_ life force, dead planets that can be mined for inert resources- right?" 

"Which are entirely useless to me," Aquamarine said. "Without life force, we can't install kindergartens, and without kindergartens, you don't have a workforce to handle the necessary terraforming." 

Peronnie snapped her fingers, which, being coated in metal, made an odd ringing sound. "That's it! That's where we can resolve the conflict! You might not be able to _grow_ a workforce, but... don't you get it? Now that we're not conquering planets anymore, we have billions of gems out there who aren't busy on conquest missions! You could get a team of terraformers together, and just bring them to a _dead_ planet that meets the rest of the specifications!" 

"Wh- wait." That... could work, but... "How am I supposed to get an entire planet's worth of terraformers to fly out to some lifeless rock?" 

Steven groaned. "I could've _helped_ you with that! If you'd just _explained_ instead of... just running off into space to hatch some kind of apocalypse plot, because you... you assumed..." 

"That there was no reasoning with someone who fundamentally didn't share her values?" Peronnie asked, giving him a look. 

He sighed. "Yyyyeah. That." 

"So we can work this out," Peronnie said. "We don't need to... um. Take revenge on anybody by mutating their entire species." 

Aquamarine scoffed. "As if it'll be that easy. You think the Diamonds will forgive my betrayal so easily, at this point? I attacked _him!_ I declared war on them! I need to see this through to the end! The Diamonds need to go _down!"_

Peronnie paused. "About that," she said. 

"It's probably nothing, but..." Steven said, hesitant. 

"Let's talk, okay? We might actually be on the same page here," Peronnie said. 

* * *

"...and so I went inside the ship." 

"Is that where you rejuvenated Volleyball?" 

"What? No. I found her like that- she'd just regenerated, and I was the first person she saw. I don't know... how that happened, exactly. It must've happened recently, but I didn't find a rejuvenator anywhere onboard." 

Steven was silent. There was something about this he didn't like. 

"It didn't take long before we fused," Aquamarine said. "I needed help sorting through the rest of the contents of the ship." 

"The... rest of the contents?" Peronnie asked. 

"The databanks," she said. "The hand ship, for some reason, didn't have any quartzes where the barracks should've been. Those rooms were just full of huge datacrystals, packed with sensitive information." 

"...What kind of information?" 

"Even now, I'm not sure what it was doing there. Volleyball didn't know about it. There must've been some kind of mixup at the hangar." 

_"What kind of information?"_

"It was... well. Mostly records on extraterrestials. A lot of it pointed to some kind of 'zoo' maintained for Pink Diamond, containing specimens of Earth flora and fauna. Humans. Records of their biology, and experiments conducted on manipulating that biology." 

"Wait, the... the people from the zoo were experimented on?" 

"I don't know how else they would've gotten the data in that much detail. I used my position as Blue Diamond's primary Aquamarine to access the zoo directly and requisition the rest of the experimental records- and _that's_ when I finalized my ingenious plan for taking revenge." 

...What were those two looking at each other like that for? Why did Steven look so upset? What were those conflicting emotions battling over Peronnie's face? Was she missing something? 


	17. Excuses, Excuses

The plant monster twitched, and didn't regain its original form. Of course. She knocked it back into the water with one hand. 

Sigh. 

"Wha-ha-hoa!" Spinel said. "Did you see _that_ guy?! What kind of freak was _that?!"_

She shapeshifted her head into an approximation of the bulbous monster, waggling her tongue around wildly. It- oh, wow. It looked _exactly_ like him! It was... 

"Ahaha... ahahahaha! That's perfect! That's exactly what he looked like! With the big eyes! And the- hahahahaha!" 

Spinel beamed, still wearing the monster face, and- stars, _that_ smile on _that_ face sent her into hysterics all over again. It was- she wasn't sure what was so funny about it, but it was _so_ funny! 

Yellow tried to catch her breath, center herself, and- 

-and then Spinel's eyes pointed in opposite directions, and she went "A-bleuhhhhhh," and Yellow collapsed onto the ground again, laughing. 

"S-stop...! It's too much! It's- ahahahaha- it's too good!" 

"Well, I'm glad _you're_ having fun," a human in the fountain said, watching the plant monster revert. 

"Yes, as am I," she agreed, trying to suppress her laughter. "This is extremely amusing, and I'm having a good time." 

The human looked annoyed for some reason. "Yeah, watching my little brother turn into a giant onion monster over and over is _super_ funny." 

"Indeed." 

"You know what would be even funnier?" he asked. 

"If next time, he turned into an even _bigger, fatter_ onion monster?" Spinel cut in, grin wide. 

"Ohohoho- ahahahaha! Spinel, please!" Yellow choked out. The very idea...! 

"Humor is about the unexpected," another human nearby said. This one was wearing some kind of dark visor. "If the same thing happens over and over again, you can get a response by breaking the pattern." 

"Word," the first human said. "That's why it'd be funny if, like, you actually fixed him next." 

_"That_ wouldn't be unexpected," Spinel said. "That's what they're trying to do! That's not subverting expectations at all!" 

"Except the expectation is failure now," visor human said. "You set up a new pattern by failing so many times in a row." 

"Right, so now it's time to break it," the first human said. 

"Guys, I think you're killing the joke by explaining it," another, shorter human said. 

"You're not thinking outside the box!" Spinel argued back. "There's _two_ expectations now. There's the expectation that it works, and the expectation that he just turns into a monster again. What would be _really_ funny is if something _completely different_ happened!" 

"Like what?" visor human asked. 

Spinel put on a doofy grin. "Like... if instead of a monster... he turned into... into a _spaceship!"_

Yellow lost it. 

"Why- hohoho- would he turn into- ahahaha- he's not even- aheeheehee, he doesn't have _machinery,_ that doesn't- ahahahahohohoha!!!" 

It didn't make any sense! The human turning into a spaceship- the virus operated on organic tissue, and spaceships weren't organic at all! That wasn't something the virus could do! Imagining that happening regardless- it'd be completely shocking, and the idea of an organic being suddenly becoming a _spaceship_ for _no reason...!_

It struck her for an instant that Pink hadn't been nearly this funny. The thought that perhaps she _traded up,_ that- 

That thought had to die. 

This was the only way they could get Pink back, right? They had to fake it. They had to fail. Then the humans would die, even if they _were_ funny, and then Steven... 

Steven... who _was_ he, without humans? She had no idea. There was something like Pink in him, but... she couldn't figure it out. He _wasn't_ Pink, that was for sure. He had that stubborn streak, he had that tendency to get fixated on irrelevancies, but there was something else there. Something alien, not just alien-obsessed. 

White thought that he _was_ Pink, trying out a new fancy of hers that would pass in time. Blue thought that he _could_ be Pink, that she was in there somewhere and could be brought out. 

She didn't see it. She'd tried so hard to see it, and hadn't been able to. That... she could respect it, but it wasn't Pink. 

What was going to happen, if this... "worked"? No more humans, and... just Steven, on Homeworld, with Blue and White expecting him to turn into Pink? It wouldn't go how they thought it would, that was for sure. _Maybe_ he would see the value of empire again, but he wouldn't become the person they wanted him to become. 

And... the value of empire... 

What did _Steven_ value? Humans, obviously- but not the way Pink valued humans. Not as curiosities. To Pink, and to any reasonable gem, they were _funny,_ but they weren't _gems._ They were only temporarily people- soon, they'd be piles of carbon again. Yet that... didn't seem to matter to him. That these creatures he was obsessed with, they'd all just be gone. Gone within a scant hundred years or less. He valued them even though he _knew_ the pain of loss was coming. Even though they were nothing but tragedies waiting to happen. 

And he valued that more highly than an eternal empire. 

That should have been such an alien thought- but here, on Earth, surrounded by these humans- watching Spinel bounce off them, seeing them walk and talk just like real people... somehow, she could feel it. The idea of seeing these smiling faces, and caring more about that than seeing a salute from an army ten billion strong... didn't seem so impossible. 

White's plan... what were they going to accomplish? Visiting that inevitable tragedy on Steven even sooner, and... then what? 

Something needed to be done. This couldn't continue. But... if she did anything, Blue and White would see that as tantamount to killing Pink with her own two hands. The betrayal in their eyes...! 

...Would that be more unbearable for her, than the loss of humanity would be for Steven? 

Would that be more unbearable for her than the loss of humanity would be for _humanity?_

What was she going to do? Because now- now, she was certain- she had to do _something._

A plan. She needed a plan, some way to put a stop to this without making it clear what she'd done- 

"WHITE DIAMOND!" 

Wh- Steven! He was here! Back from his visit to the prison! 

Waves of rosewater crashed against the banks as White Diamond spun around to face the warp. 

"Steven!" White said, and Yellow wasn't sure what that tone in her voice was. It sounded like a _new_ one. She might've thought it was... _fear,_ if that weren't obviously impossible. 

Steven had announced himself with a shout, but he suddenly looked considerably less confident when he opened his mouth. "I... I have to ask you some questions!" 

"Oh?" White asked. "If you're wondering how the healing is going, well. I'm afraid it's much more difficult than it was healing the corrupted gems." 

"...Yeah?" Steven asked. There was an edge in his voice, like he'd been expecting that. 

White gestured to the fountain around her. The Aquamarine fusion's forward operating base had been largely dismantled, and the humans were gathered around the three of them as they tried to "use their powers" to undo the "plague". It was clear from lack of humans outside the water and the Halite guards around the perimeter that no progress had been made. 

"It's simply not the same thing as before," White said. "What we did, it was no trouble to undo- but we still don't know how that traitor could've done something like this." 

"Oh," Steven said. "I... see." 

"Fusions are unpredictable," White Diamond said, shrugging. "Prone to cause... these sorts of messes. We'll see what we can do, but..." 

Someone behind Steven put a hand on his shoulder. Who was _that?_ It couldn't be a fusion- she could only sense one gem. It didn't look like an off-color of anything she'd ever put into production, though. It resembled a Peridot in some respects, particularly the cut of the gem... but it was much too large, and the coloration was all off. Had Steven been putting his own designs into production?! 

Steven took a deep breath. 

"So... it might be permanent, then?" 

White nodded, wearing her #20- the smile that was trying very hard to disguise itself as a sympathetic frown. "I'm afraid so. We can keep trying, but..." 

"I know how this must sound, coming from me," Blue said, "but sometimes you need to know when to let go." 

Steven stood completely still. What was he...? 

"...Then what?" he asked. 

"Then what?" White repeated. "Then... anything you like, I suppose. You're still part of our family." 

"In that case," Steven said, "I think I'll stay here. I don't know if I can ever fix this, but... I have to try." 

White twitched. The air went cold. "Steven, it's okay. You did everything you could." 

"No," Steven said. "It's barely been a few days! I haven't tried everything yet. I know I can still fix this!" 

She felt the beginnings of tears begin to well up in her eyes. Blue was... 

"Steven, we understand that you need to try your best," Blue said. "But... what if it never works? What if you keep trying, and trying, but you eventually realize... you can't? After a few hundred years, it... might not be so fun to keep trying." 

Steven looked Blue dead in the eyes, and Yellow's own throat seized up as Blue froze. "That doesn't matter," he said. "It doesn't matter if it's not fun. Humans don't exist just to be _fun._ Even if it's boring... it's what I have to do." 

That... wasn't something Pink would say. Not ever. 

Tears spilled from her eyes and began to freeze over, as Blue and White began to lose control of their emotions. Was _this_ what it'd come to? Did she need to be the adult for _both_ of them, now? 

She stepped forward, and the air began to crackle with electri- 

-wait. No. It didn't. Not quite. She'd pushed out her power, and... it'd been disrupted. Something was in the air- something metal. A _lot_ of somethings metal. It was no trouble to route around it all, but now that she was feeling it... 

The air was full of mirrors. Why... was the air full of mirrors? 

And why were the mirrors, so carefully-arranged in line with the scenery as to be invisible, around _her,_ around Blue, around White and the Halites? Not around Steven? Not around... 

The... off-color Peridot? Was that- no, yes, she could feel it. The force keeping the mirrors aloft bore the telltale signature. Whatever that thing was, it _was_ a Peridot, and it was stronger than it should have been. And she could certainly overpower it, turning her lightning towards the lightningrod... 

But no. No, that was Steven's. _Steven's_ aide had done this. Deployed an invisible threat against _her,_ against the _Diamonds._ If the past two years hadn't trained the reflex out of her, her fury at this insubordination might have exploded out of her, but... no. 

This was exactly what she needed. Steven wouldn't have done this without a reason. He'd come prepared to fight- which meant he knew it might come to a fight. Why would it come to a fight, if something hadn't happened at the false prison? If he didn't know, or at least suspect? She might not need to do anything at all. 

...Except that Steven counted _her_ among his potential enemies, and she was a bit too late to try to do anything about that. 

(Why was this happening? Hadn't the Sapphires foreseen something else? Hadn't Steven's "Garnet" been accounted for? They hadn't seen Garnet anywhere _near_ the prison. She'd been- she'd been right here, at the fountain, right?) 

"Steven," White said- and on her face was smile #0- that which was not a smile. This... was not good. "Come home with us, please. We don't want you to suffer for years, wasting your time on a broken planet." 

That line wasn't going to work- 

"It's not a broken planet," Steven said. "It's alive! It's going to stay alive! And I'm going to make sure of it! No matter how long it takes!" 

She had to get herself off the threat list, here. Steven was becoming agitated. What could she do? 

She... locked eyes with the Peridot. Nudged the mirrors a bit with her own power. Gave it a subtle nod. Letting it know she knew. 

It narrowed its eyes- eyes, like all other eyes, now streaming tears- but didn't move the mirrors. That... wasn't ideal, but it at least didn't sound the alarm. If it knew its deception had been uncovered, it would've had some kind of reaction. Changed its plan. That nothing had changed... meant it wasn't afraid of her. 

That was faintly ridiculous at first blush, but maybe that meant her objective had been accomplished. Communicating that she wasn't a foe. That had to be it- there was no way that off-color could think itself capable of standing against a _Diamond._

"Look," White said, scooping a human out of the water in one hand. "I am _White Diamond,_ Steven. This is as much as _I_ can manage." 

The human began to contort and growl, its growls harmonizing with an unheard song. White held it in both hands, and it began to glow- white radiant energy pouring off the monster. Exertion showed on White's face, as the human's shape began to shrink, then grow, then shrink, then grow... until at last she lost her grip and the snarling creature dropped into the water. 

"You- *pant*- see, Pink? It's not possible. Please- come home!" 

"...Is that really the best you can do?" 

"Pink, I-" 

"Steven," the Peridot said. "His name is Steven." 

White froze, paralyzed by dismay. _That_ had been a mistake. 

"Of- of course," White said, her eye only slightly twitching at insubordination from a Peridot. Impressive. 

"How did you get here so fast?" Steven asked, tears in his eyes that actually looked as though they weren't all Blue's. "You used a... mass relay, right?" 

White flinched. "I- well, yes, of course, though you see-" 

"There's a good reason for that, right? Some reason you didn't tell me you had that?" 

"I..." 

"There has to be, right?!" Steven cried. "You wouldn't do this on purpose, right? It's not like... I couldn't help you, right? This is just- it's all a misunderstanding!" 

_"Hey,"_ Spinel whispered from her shoulder. _"What's happening? I'm super lost."_

"Yes!" White said, panic and relief battling for dominance. "Of course, a misunderstanding! You see, that was because..." 

As White floundered... Yellow noticed her own tears beginning to gush forth stronger. What was Blue- 

She turned and saw Blue, who'd scooped up one of the humans and had immersed it in a globe of water. Setting it down on the shore, she stepped away... and the water glowed blue, and splashed to the ground. 

Steven was staring, and White spun around to see what he was staring at. And... 

"I'm... so, so sorry," Blue said, and Yellow's vision began to swim as the tears reached a fever pitch. "She's... she's really gone, isn't she?" 

"Did- did you...?!" White sputtered, as the human failed to twist itself into a horrible monster. It stared at its hands in shock. 

"I didn't- be-believe you," she bawled. "Ohhhhhhhh...! She's... you're not..." 

"W-what a breakthrough!" White tried, sweeping over towards the human. "It seems she's managed to... temporarily... suspend the changes! For several seconds!" 

White reached a hand out towards the human, but stopped as her hand met an array of mirrors. Space appeared to crack as the elaborate construction was pushed out of alignment, and the reflections began bouncing every which way. 

Steven sighed- no, groaned. "I thought... I thought the past two years had taught you something," he said. "I really thought we were getting somewhere. Was all that... really just to, what? Appease one of my mom's temper tantrums? Was it all fake?" 

_"Pink,"_ White hissed. "I _also_ really thought we were _getting somewhere._ Must you _really_ push your luck further?" 

"I'm so-o-ooooryyyy!" Blue wailed. 

Sigh. It was now or never. Couldn't let Blue hog _all_ the sob story. 

"If it wasn't obvious," Yellow spoke up, channeling power towards a human of her own, "White was hoping things could go back to normal. You know how difficult it can be to openly defy her." 

"Wait, what?" Spinel asked, betrayal in her voice. "Were _you_ trying to kill all humans, too?" 

"I-" 

"HEY!! JUST SO YOU KNOW, IT WASN'T MY IDEA THIS TIME, OKAY? I STILL AGREE KILLING HUMANS IS BAD!" Spinel shouted down at Steven. Then she nudged Yellow and whispered in her ear. "But if we _did_ have to kill all humans for some reason... and I'm not saying we should, I'm pretty sure that's still bad actually... but why didn't you ask _me_ for help? I have _ideas!"_

_"Not now, Spinel."_

Steven looked despondent. "I thought... I mean, what else was I supposed to _do?_ I tried so hard to help her get better- to help you _all_ get better!" 

"I'm- understand, Steven, my hand was forced..." 

Steven glared at her. "How is your hand any less forced _now?!_ Whatever you were afraid of- if you'd actually changed _one bit,_ you wouldn't have let this happen!" 

She winced. "It was... complicated. I meant to stop this, it was just..." 

Steven screwed his eyes shut to try and block the tears. "I don't want to hear it! You went through with this! You did _this_ to Earth!" 

And- uh-oh. Was that- he was _glowing!_ That could only mean- 

"Steven, calm yourself," she tried. "Please, it's... this is hard enough." 

"What's hard? What do we do now, besides _fix_ this already? And maybe actually _try_ to care about someone besides yourself, this time?" 

"I know what we do now!" a chipper voice declared. 

Oh no. 

"I can quite directly tell you _exactly_ what it is we will all do now!" she said. 

"White, don't-" 

"We are all going to forget _any_ of this ever happened, and go- as you put it- _back to normal._ Right! Now!!" 

This was bad. Yellow Diamond was- 

-well, no. Yellow Diamond certainly was _not._ That would be far too risky.


	18. Smile #Y

There it was. Yes, this was how it was supposed to be. Everyone- finally- doing as she bid them do. _That_ was the feeling she'd missed. 

Wait, no. Not everyone. Pink was babbling something- like before, she'd somehow shrugged off the effects. It was probably the doing of that... _thing_ she'd encased her gem in. Her gross prosthetic human body, resisting her. That was irritating. 

As, for whatever reason, mirrors fell out of the air and splashed into the water, Pink stopped babbling and started yelling. And then running at her very quickly. She was glowing, even- really going all-out with her latest tantrum. 

She turned her aside with an open palm, tossing her into the water, where she bowled over a handful of organics. 

Pink said something about stopping her as she splashed into the water, but it was hard to make out. Not that it mattered, really. She'd been listening to the words coming out of Pink's mouth for _far_ too long, and could really use a break. 

She took a look around. Everyone was standing at attention, as she bid. Her guards were keeping the organics at spearpoint, and... she had the others arrange themselves artistically around the edges, forming nice, orderly processions. It almost looked like a proper place to hold court- she'd have to remember the design for when she set Pink up with a new (and pre-depopulated) colony. 

As for returning everyone to their proper place... well, most of them could be folded back into their units, but a number of the Era 1 gems Pink had corralled were tragically deformed and would need to be replaced. She could probably leave them here to be dealt with by... perhaps the cluster? Or perhaps it was better to simply deploy a black hole seed, and write off this particular solar system. 

As for the warps- hm, she hadn't been looking over at those, off a ways from the fountain. She started some of the cleaner-looking gems over towards the warps with instructions to report to rejuvenation. That would do nicely. 

Oh, Pink was starting to move again. She turned her aural perception down to almost nothing, as there was, mercifully, no need to listen to a word she said. She could take a break, and finally be alone with her perfect thoughts- 

_Peridot?_

What? 

What was that? What was that sound? 

_I- I don't understand. What's... are you... hey! Peridot!_

Why was a _voice_ in _her_ head asking questions about a _Peridot,_ of all things?! What was- 

_This... I don't think I can't control this by myself! I mean, I'll give it a try... but it's going to be weird._

"Who's there?!" White cried out. "Show yourself!" 

Pink erupted from the water and yelled something impudent. 

"I didn't mean _you,"_ she said, and had the Sapphire fusion toss her aside. "I mean- who's that, in my head?" 

_Wait, is she... because you're... oh. This is... going to make this tricky._

"Silence!" she shouted. She looked around. No one was there- everything save Pink and the organic lifeforms was completely monochrome, all under her command. What... was happening? There was nothing outside of her range that could be broadcasting these- _thoughts,_ if you could call them thoughts. She could _see_ that. There were no signals in the air that weren't hers. 

It couldn't be the organics, could it? No, that didn't make sense. She knew everything important there was to know about organics, and rule number one was that they were incapable of telepathy. 

_If I'm going to fight her, I have to be careful what I think. If she's in your head, and you're in mine, and she's hearing what I think to you... it's going to be hard to hit her with a surprise attack._

What?! What was this? "Attack?! Impudent- show yourself!" 

_I can't pull off any kind of elaborate keikaku that surprises her. She'd see it coming. Unless I can somehow block out my thoughts while I do it? No, stupid, how would I even do that? I need my thoughts to think. But they have to be thoughts she can't do anything about._

"This... what _is_ this? Who are you? What are you doing?" 

Pink launched herself again, encased in a spiky pink bubble, so she had a Bismuth knock her out of the sky with the thrown hammer. Distracting. 

_Right, that's my one advantage! She can hear my thoughts, but she doesn't know who I am! As long as I stay still and pretend to be under her control, I can use your- wait, no. She's controlling everyone, so if anyone's here who can see magnetism, or whatever it is, they'd be able to tell it was us. I need another plan!_

Was _that_ it? Something with an immunity? "Pretending to be under my control, are you? I do believe I can do something about _that,"_ she said. Then she turned to the right and poofed an Amethyst with a kick. 

_AAAA! What did she just-_

"I don't need these pawns to _crush_ you," she said, smacking another one of Pink's charges away. "If you're hiding amidst them, I simply need poof them all to be rid of you." 

_No, no, this is bad! Except... also, that's a terrible plan, isn't it? I mean, she's doing the work for us, taking out her minions to try to get at us. She'll get to us eventually unless I move and give away my position, but... if I were her, I'd just command them all to do something and see which one didn't move. I- oh, crap! I mean, I wouldn't do that! That would be bad! You didn't hear anything! Blah blah blah blah blah don't think of a pink elephant!_

She froze. That... was a better plan, yes. Than the one she'd come up with. She should have done that from the start. Why didn't _she_ think of that? 

_Why_ didn't she think of that? She was the superior being! Her plans were flawllllllllless flawed than everyone else's! This was stupid, this was impossible- 

Blue twitched as her control slipped. 

"NO," she said, and lanced out with a laser. Blue poofed after about a second of sustained fire. 

The plan! It- it was a voice in _her_ head, so it _was_ her plan! It counted as her plan! The perfect plan! All of her were to jump forward- now! 

_Whoa! Okay, that was weird, but it worked out. You're... still here, I guess? Kind of? Under her control? I guess... that'd make it tricky to fight, if we started wrestling for control, so... maybe we should unfuse? Or... no, that wouldn't help. There has to be some way we can use this. Connie would just get captured or killed on her... own. Wait, what? Connie would- I would. Why am I thinking about myself in the... am I still Peronnie? How does this even work?_

Aha! "Unfuse?! You- disgusting- is _that_ it? Some fusion is immune to me?" Another one of those unpredictable powers... but it narrowed things down. All she needed to do was destroy all the _fusions_ in the area. 

The Sapphire fusion poofed, and its... it was a _Ruby,_ how vile, fell into the water. There were a few others- something with another Sapphire, an off-color. A Pearl and a Ruby, another abomination spitting in the face of her perfect society. A large one made up of several... she didn't even recognize some of those, either too old or off-color to have names. A handful more, some _proper_ fusions of Quartzes. 

...and that was everything with more than one gem. 

_Oh my god. She missed us. I can't believe she- no, of course she missed us! Because we don't look like a fusion! I mean, crap! Gack! Oh no, you got me... mmmmmmmmmmm clouds fog nothingness empty mind not here... is this working... no that's a thought dead people don't have thoughts... clouds, clouds, breathing, that one rock over there looks interesting I mean nothing, no thoughts..._

"What is it going to _take?!"_ she roared. How could this _joke_ of a lesser being still be standng? It didn't make any _sense!_

...Oh, Pink had latched onto her back and was punching. Adorable! Just like old times. Her tantrums, in moderation, _did_ add some spice to things. 

_...Yeah, I don't think this is working. We need an actual plan! We can't just sit here and wait for her to detective out who we are- she'll figure it out eventually! We need to find a way to stop her before that happens! ...And really, we're kind of lucky we haven't accidentally just thought about the fact that we're right here, that would've TOTALLY given the game away._

"A-HA!" 

_Crap!_

She scanned the assembled gems, all of them standing to attention. She had them salute, and didn't see anything unusual. What was "right here"? 

_AAAAAAaaaaa wait. Wait, no, right, "right here" doesn't mean anything to her. It's just me who knows that "right here" means right here. Does that mean this half-possessed fusion telepathy thing is verbal? Is it because _ I _ think in words? That's so weird! Okay, but, back on task..._

"I'm going to shatter you," White said. She _was_ going to shatter whatever this was. It had violated the sanctity of _her_ mind! This aberration somehow didn't understand the hierarchy of fundamental importance-to-the-universe. Lesser beings did _not_ defy the will of greater beings. It had to die. 

_Other gems are a no-go, which is too bad. That's where all the powers are. Humans can't... wait, hang on. What ARE the humans doing? Um... huh. There's... okay, most of them are being held at spearpoint by those weird new salt crystal things White brought with her... could I deal with those? They don't seem to be going in the water, which might be a limitation of making minions out of salt... maybe if I lured White Diamond into the middle of the pool where... her... no, that wouldn't work. Even without the salt gems, she has super-lasers and a mind-controlled gem army._

"Halites, fool." 

_Right, salt gems, thanks. Back to humans..._

"You think organic beings are going to save you? Don't make me laugh. I am, at present, sick to _death_ of laughter." 

_Blah blah blah blah. Why is she still talking? She's a grade-A buttface and I'm pretty sure I can find a way to take her down. How about Steven? He's probably going to be pretty important here. He's not really a match for her, but she's also keeping the kid gloves on with him, so we could maybe use that..._

She extended her arm and _slammed_ a fist into the ground, cracking the earth and shaking everything around her. _How_ could any being _possibly_ have thoughts like that? White-hot fury was spilling over. 

_Whoa. Tantrum time, huh?_

Whhhhhhhhowdareyou horribleworthless slimeclod deathkill die die die, "IT IS **NOT** TANTRUM TIME!!!" 

_Okay, I can probably use that, I guess- all we need to do is think insults at her and she'll get super PO'd. But, anyway... right, Steven."_

She reached behind her and plucked Pink from her back, where she'd been trying to chip away at her flawless skin. "Pink will _not_ be of any use to you, obviously! _She_ will come home, and _you_ will die! DIE!" 

"White," a voice next to her croaked. 

She whirled around- Yellow?! 

"Stop," Yellow gasped, and then froze again as she reasserted her control. That- that wasn't supposed to happen! First Blue, and... no, there was _no_ limit to her power! She had clearly just... forgotten! To pay attention! Let her focus slip! 

...No, she _couldn't_ have let her focus slip, that was for beings with _flaws,_ aaaaaaaAAAAAAAA! 

_Oh! It's got to be an emotional control thing! That's kind of how it is for all of them, isn't it? Steven's powers are super emotion-y, and Blue uses emotions like a blunt force weapon... I don't know about Yellow? I SHOULD know about Yellow- come on, Peridot! Back me up here! Ugh... okay, but... if I can rattle her some more, maybe we can get Yellow free and do something..._

_"You,"_ she said, injecting more hatred into her voice than she'd ever thought would be necessary, "will do _no such thing._ You are a _mistake_ and you will _die."_

_Wait, no. The... Mr. Smiley! And... no, there's the water... but... drain! Like how they beat the first boss in Zucchini Journey! Yeah! That should occupy... and then if she's busy coordinating that..._

She struck out. Crushed a Jasper. That crunch, probably shattered. 

_What- NO!_

"You don't understand," she said, voice low and quiet. _"Nothing_ that doesn't help should be alive. Every second you exist, every second you oppose me, is a fraction of the potential of the universe _wasted."_

_Never mind, never mind, before anyone else maybe dies... but how to drain it? What's the source, anyway? The statue? How does that work? Peridot probably investigated the logistics of that... c'mon, wake up!_

"I _created_ you for the _sole_ reason that I believe you would be of use to me. Do you not realize that? Do you not understand that your very _existence_ is meant to serve me? Do you not _get_ how _wrong_ it is for you to exist, by _my_ favor, and _not_ obey my will?" 

_Oh, wow. I mean, that argument falls flat since I'm not a gem, but... geez, welcome to the subtext of practically everything Mom ever says to me. No, I'm... not being fair. I think. Ugh, forget I said anything. Thought anything._

"Not... a gem?" 

That... no. How was that- no, of course, if it was a _fusion,_ but it wasn't _two gems,_ that would explain why it survived the winnowing. And why it had partially resisted her control! And... it had addressed its other component as a Peridot, that meant it was a _fusion_ of a _Peridot_ and a _human!_

That was _obviously impossible,_ but since she was a _flawless genius,_ she'd figured it out anyway! Better! Much better! 

_Uh-oh. I think she's onto us. That leaves... right, okay, Lapis is... and she's over there... and I can probably... with the mirrors, I still have a feel for... oh my god, if this doesn't work we're super super dead..._

"Fear?" she asked. "You finally understand that your _mistake_ of an existence is _finally_ going to end, and you feel _fear?_ Not gratitude? You really _are_ a hideous accident, aren't you?" 

_Okay. Three, two, one... wait, no. I shouldn't count it down, she can hear that. I should count it down but then go on two. Wait, no, crap! She can hear that too! I'll just-_

Movement! The off-color Peridot that'd arrived with Pink! 

And, after a split second's consideration, yes- a white-hot beam of pure annihilation where the Peridot had been a moment before, how about that? That would do nicely. Pink shouted in predictable protest. 

She just about managed to react before the white-hot beam of pure annihilation bounced off an array of mirrors and refracted every which way. She managed to dodge all but one of the reflected beams- a searing lance which punched a neat hole in the upper left of her hairdo. 

She was frozen in shock for a moment, taking in what had just happened... and then she remembered what was happening, and scanned for the off-color Peridot, the- the _human fusion._ It was... gone? 

And so was something else. Something else was missing. There... had been a Lapis Lazuli, right? Where had _that_ gone? 

* * *

The depot warp flared, and two figures stumbled out of it, white fading from their forms. One helped the other to her feet as another stepped forward to, uh, "greet" them. 

"Wh- you! You're back! Did you fools screw it up already?!" 

"Whoa, hold on! Give me a moment! Half of me just got un-mind-controlled..." 

"So you fools _totally_ screwed it up already." 

One of them- the Lapis- looked around in confusion. 

"What... what's happening? Is- Peridot?! Is that you?" 

"Oh, jeez- hey, Lapis. Look, I'll fill you in later, but, um. We might need an assist. I grabbed you just in case, but I don't think you _have_ to fuse if you don't want to, if Aquamarine has the water thing covered..." 

"What are you talking about?" Aquamarine demanded. "What water thing? Why did you bring a _Lapis_ here?" 

"I- hang on, it's all getting mixed up... I think Connie had to fly solo for a minute there..." 

"Peridot- I mean, wait, Connie? You fused with-" 

"It's a long story! Look, things went bad with White Diamond, but I've got a plan. You're just... all going to need to trust me." 

* * *

...No, it was gone. Clearly. She'd annihilated it, of course. The blast- some of it had been deflected, but surely enough of it got through to destroy that freak of nature. She couldn't find it because it was _gone._ Dead! 

And that Lapis had gone missing because... yes, one of the beams had bounced wildly and struck it by accident. There was no problem there. 

This she believed right up until the warp activated again. 

Standing on the warp pad was something as tall as she was, myriad eyes concealed by a mirrored visor. Two mouths, four arms. Blue-green and silver, wild hair flowing into a cape of water which billowed in the lack of wind. A fusion of five or six lesser gems. 

It pointed a finger, said "YOU-", and then stopped dead. Its watery cape fell to the ground and flowed away. 

White smiled her #5- the one she'd based her #12 on, the one that let someone know that their defiance was cute. The frozen white statue of a giant fusion did not react. It couldn't. 

"Is _that_ what you thought would save you?" 

_Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave..._

"Really, I shouldn't be surprised. I doubt any of the fools in there were _around_ for those early days, before we realized it was futile to try to make use of fusion. There's a _reason_ we don't do this sort of foolishness." 

Pink, still pinched between two fingers, shouted something inconsequential. 

"Hush now, Pink. I'm busy cleaning up your mess." 

_Leave, come on, leave, leave, go away, go away...!_

"Reduced to begging, are we? You've realized that you- little human, still conscious in there- have trapped yourself? Maybe you could _squirm_ and _thrash_ before, when it was just you and that Peridot- but of course, _I_ have a controlling interest, now. You aren't going to move one single hydrogen diameter." 

_Leave, leave, get out, go down, get out, leave, leave, leave, how does this work, leave..._

"Oh, I have every intention of leaving," she said. "I'm going to take Pink with me, clear away this ruined planet, and put everything right. You don't need to worry." 

_Leave leave okay yes leave leave leave leave leave go go go go..._

"Okay? You approve? Seen reason, finally?" she said, ignoring Pink's further whining. "I'm afraid I don't quite believe you, after the things you've said to me." 

She felt a familiar faint pain as Pink resorted to biting, again. It'd be a futile effort even if her bite _didn't_ have healing properties. 

"Now, Pink, watch carefully. _This_ is a _traitor._ With your memories missing, perhaps you don't remember my lessons. Let me get you back up to speed on the procedure for handling these sorts of situations." 

_Leave leave slowly not so fast shh leave down down through the cracks leave down leave..._

"Hm?" That hadn't exactly made sense. Perhaps organic minds lost control of their faculties when their inevitable death confronted them. That would make sense. 

_Leave leave leave leave yes good, leave leave leave..._

"You see, Pink, it doesn't make much sense to personally supervise each and every traitor at all times. You'll spread yourself thin trying to control that many, no matter how cleverly you apply your authority. When something isn't working properly and can't be repaired, we _dispose_ of it." 

She raised her free hand and summoned one of her many weapons. A lovely pair of pliers, for when something needed to be extracted and crushed without sullying her hands. 

_Leave leave okay good yes okay it's all dry. That should do it._

What? 

_Sorry, I had to concentrate super hard there, so I wasn't listening. What was White saying? Something about a controlling interest?_

"No," White said. "I was saying that you were about to be disposed of-" 

_Right, because I'm defective or a mistake or something, right? And she has- I guess I can just think directly at her instead of you guys-_ you _have some kind of zero-tolerance policy on mistakes?_

"I- yes, but- silence! Your catastrophe of an existence has gone on long enough!" 

She swung her pliers at the frozen fusion, and- oh, for crying out loud. They recoiled off a multifaceted pink barrier. 

"Pink, please. I'm trying to provide a demonstration." 

"Bleh bleah nyeah, I'm going to be a child about this and not internalize any important life lessons," Pink probably said, or something. She sighed. 

"Please remove your barrier. I _can_ get around it eventually, and you'll only tire yourself out," White replied. Patience. Patience was the key when dealing with Pink- _something_ would distract her eventually. 

_I can't believe this is actually working,_ the voice in her head said. _I thought we were going to have to call the drones to guard him while he got set up. I probably could've been more overt with the water, even._

"It isn't _working,"_ she snapped. "Pink can't protect you for very long. And what are you babbling about?" 

_Can't she see out of the eyes of everyone she's controlling? How has she not noticed? I really thought I'd need to do some fancy stuff with water to distract her. She really gets locked in when she's mad at someone, huh? Some kind of gem hyperfocus?_

She dismissed the pliers, pressed her hand against the barrier, and _willed._ Seven or eight sorts of magic suffused it, and it fell to pieces as geometric cracks chewed through the edges of the crystalline surface. 

"Now, Pink," she said, and then- 

_Sorry, maybe this is a bad idea, but I feel like if I didn't warn you, so you could pay attention right before Mr. Smiley clobbered you and I could see the look on your face... I'd kind of regret it for the rest of my life._

What? Pay attention right before- 

She briefly shifted her vision to Yellow's, and saw, standing behind her, an enormous grinning black goo monster three times her size raising two colossal fists into the sky. 

How exactly _had_ she not noticed that? It had been an organic, hadn't it? The virus- the virus that the fountain had been suppressing- the fountain which was, now that she thought about it, suddenly empty of water, as if it had all just _left..._ why didn't she hear any of that? 

Wait, because she'd- no, no matter. No mistakes. She turned her hearing back on, because she felt like it, and- 

**"-ＩＮ ＣＯＦＦＥＥ ＯＲ ＴＥＡ ／ ＮＡＰＫＩＮＳ ＡＲＥ ＡＬＷＡＹＳ ＦＲＥＥ"**

-she raised her hand to fire a beam, and- 

_Let me put this in terms I think you'll understand._

-and some kind of horrible plant monster launched itself at her wrist, knocking the beam off-course- 

_Perfect, and flawed. That's how you see things, right?_

-and more organic monsters held down her feet, and a giant mass of ooze slammed into her from above- 

**"ＢＯＴＨ ＨＡＮＤＳ ／ ＰＵＳＨ ＢＥＬＯＷ ＴＨＥ ＤＩＡＰＨＲＡＧＭ"**

_I could make a whole speech about how that framework doesn't even make sense, how there's different strengths and weaknesses, and ways to be that aren't worse than different ones... but I don't know if that would really get through to you._

-and her control slipped, for a moment- 

_You-_ "-whoa, it feels weird to become another person again mid-sentence- sorry, I was saying... even if we grant your whole premise, you're still missing the point." 

-and Pink slipped out from between her fingers as she fell to the ground- 

"You're not flawed because Steven proved you had emotions that one time. You're not flawed because your genocide attempt failed. You're not flawed because you didn't see my trap coming. That's not your flaw. That's not the way you're a mistake." 

-and ooze buried her, and she tried to take control of this thing but it wasn't a gem, she could barely sense it let alone control it- 

"If you're 'flawed', if you're a 'mistake', it's because even in this linear better-worse paradigm, you're stuck. You can't get better, because you assume you know what 'better' looks like. And to you, 'better' is just 'more like you'." 

-and she wasn't _stuck,_ no! No, that wasn't true, she wasn't stuck! In this choking ooze surrounding her, or- or- or- 

"You can't _grow_ like that. If it's just about flaws, and you DO have flaws, but the only way you can think of to fix your flaws is doing the same thing you always do, you'll never get rid of those flaws." 

Pink said something useless, and it didn't help. 

-she fired off a laser but the ooze didn't care, there was just more ooze, and gems were everywhere just _doing_ things that she didn't _tell_ them to do- 

"Imagine you met another gem, and that gem came out with a defect. No matter what it did, it couldn't ever realize that any of its ideas were wrong. It might mess up and fail to do what it was trying to do, but it could never realize it was trying to do the wrong thing." 

-and this was all wrong, that wasn't her, that _wasn't,_ she was _different,_ she was _White Diamond-_

"So how do you know you're not like that gem? That your whole idea of Diamonds as the rightful rulers of this universe is just... a malfunction? How do you know you're not where you are because you were most powerful gem to _suffer_ from that malfunction, and dominate all the rest? Were there other ones who thought they were Diamonds, once upon a time?" 

-and it wasn't _there,_ not that many eons ago, how could it _possibly_ know that, this was some kind of trick, Blue had blabbed- 

"If you really want to make things right- make things 'perfect'- the first thing you need to realize is that you don't _actually_ know what 'perfect' even _is._ Once you realize _that,_ you can start trying to find out. Trying new thi-" 

"Gah... my head. You- don't try to reason with her." 

"No, I think I'm getting through to-" 

She stretched out one hand, reaching for anything, firing at anything, trying to pull herself out of this trap, trying to find the footing she'd lost, reaching for anything she could say to make things right- 

_Right?_

"You can try to 'get through' to her later. After I do _this,"_ said Yellow, and then there was lightning and then there was silence.


	19. Spinel Solves Politics

She didn't know what to do.

There wasn't anything. There just wasn't anything at all. There was only her, and somehow that was less comforting than usual.

There hadn't been anyone but her for a long time, and she didn't know what to do.

She'd entertained the possibility that she'd been defeated, and that she'd had to retreat to her gem. It hadn't happened before, so she wouldn't know what that felt like.

But that was impossible, obviously.

It was impossible for two reasons. First, it presupposed she'd been defeated, which was of course one count of impossibility. Second, she couldn't simply form herself and leave- she'd tried, and- and surely she knew how, so she would've succeeded. Third...

Third, it was too... empty.

This couldn't be _her._ She wasn't _empty._ She was a flawless being. She contained everything that was good and right, endless depths of splendor. Surely within her gem would not simply be... herself, and endless whiteness.

Endless whiteness.

No. No, this had to be something else.

She tried to remember. How did she get here?

A... fusion, some kind of monster, attacked her. It set another monster upon her, and she couldn't kill it immediately, and then she lost control. And then...

Oh.

No, that didn't make sense. Yellow wouldn't do that. Yellow _couldn't_ do that. Surely she was immune. Not that there'd been cause to test it, but... _surely_ she was immune.

Something else, then. She'd perhaps, in the fracas, been shoved onto a malfunctioning warp, and teleported into the heart of a star? That would explain the endless whiteness.

But it was cold, here.

No one had been here for a very long time. There was no heat- only light. Not even light- only white, a completely lightless white that by all means ought to have been black.

_White._

Yes, that was the color. Announcing its own name, now. Brilliant.

_Wake up, White._

Wake up? She was wide awake. There was nothing else for her to be. What would she do here- sleep? What would that accomplish?

_Please, wake up and come out, White. We need to talk._

Come out? No, that- she'd been over this. This place wasn't her. This place couldn't be her. She'd tried to come out and it'd failed- so of course it wasn't her, she wasn't empty inside like this place. She-

_She's not responding. We'll have to skip to the inducer._

_Oh, she won't like that..._

_No one does._

Suddenly, there was a rush of pressure as the endless whiteness around her rapidly closed in. All around her- suffocating her- _crushing_ her...!

Panic set in, and she threw out a hand against the enclosing walls. A hand- yes, she had a hand now. And another, and her legs, and then when all that was pushing against her prison of infinite nothing, the nothing closed in on her head. She had a head, now- and she could see. She could see Yellow.

"How are the restraints?" Yellow barked to a Pearl.

"Holding, my Diamond," the Pearl replied.

"For now," Blue Diamond interjected. "We don't know what she's capable of, remember. We just have to hope enough of them work."

"And if they don't- kablooie! Bshbshbshbshblsh," a familiar grating voice said, complete with disgusting mouth sounds.

"Ha. Acknowledged," Yellow said. "Is she conscious yet?"

She groaned. Every part of her was in pain- she'd been hooked up to a manifestation inducer. One of Yellow's toys, a machine which pumped energy into a gem to force it to reform regardless of whether its body was ready. A tool of interrogation.

That meant that-

-it meant that she had to very quickly discard several trains of thought before they could collide with their destinations. She had just emerged from her gem- and that implied nothing, there was no reason to be upset about that. It didn't mean anything that she'd been poofed.

Well- it meant that Yellow and Blue were traitors, of course, so she opened her eyes and fired a ggg̹̹̟̺̖g̡͓̫̖̠̲g̟̱͍̳g̼͔g̘̹͇͞g͈̥̫̲̤g̷̭̙͕̖ͅģ̤̥̤̙͈g̶̮̖̠̹̙̞g̫͓g̵̮̺̝͉̦͔g̡̟͓̱̞̫͙͜g͈͇̮̭̘͍͔̜͝_g̘̰͙͎͖͘ͅg̡̬̯g͏̺̱̮̯͎̬g̖͍̞̠̩͝ͅg̛̺̝ͩ̏̃̅̋g̢̜͍͕̹̝̪̅g̰͓̻͍̱̻̊ͯg̡̳͚̖̰̍͛̓̇ͨͅg̵ͮ̍̌g̰̰͉͂̋ͣͥͣg̷͌̀͐͂͑͗g̛ͣḡ̡̩̦ͅg͕̟̲̭̼͒͛ͥͭg̗͕̩̮̘̩g̡̛̫̥̘̠̜̙͙̖̰̤̝ͬͪ͆͗̇̽͋̆̂̐͛̓͛́͐̎͐͞g̨̟̤̙̬̜̟ͬ̍̎ͧͧ͝g̨͍̖̬̳͓̖̑ͤ̎ͣ͌ͧ̑̿͐͘͟͜g͌͊͌͆͊͗̌ͫ̃̋̉͊͊̔̕͡҉̶̻̲̳̮̟͎̻͇̯͉̰̺̕g̵̗̹̟͓͔͇̳͉̻͓̺̞̲̻̹͖̳͓͒̓́̂̊͆ͪ͒̈͑ͣͧͯ̄͠g̺̩̣͇͍̭͔̥͕̭̉ͧ̎̾ͯͨͪ̾̾͞͠g̷̭͙͚̟̼̤̯̱̺̺̝̠̀̿͆͋ͯͣ͐̃̊̒̉̅̌̆̕͜g̉̔̎͆̿̈ͬͪͪ҉̕͏̩̱̮͎̮͔͞ģ̠̳̜̻͚̱͎̩͔̹̞͓͚̺͚̘͚̭́̋ͩͭ̓̏̄͢ḩ̼̝̺̣̤̣͉̺̭̪̤̲̻̫̃̋ͦ̒͘͞_

Her vision swam, her eyes burned, and her physical form winked out.

* * *

Spinel watched as White Diamond's face lit up. The full-spectrum containment sheath made her seize up, waggle around like a ragdoll being shaken by an enthusiastic dog, and poof out of existence for a moment before the inducer forced her back into it. She smiled.

Yellow sighed relief. "That one worked, at least."

"White, please don't strain yourself," Blue said. "Everything is going to be fine."

White boggled, probably because Blue just said something totally wild in context. Haha, what had she been _expecting?_

"How..." she croaked, "is this supposed to be _fine?"_

There was an awkward silence as Blue tried to think of something to say.

"You _really_ didn't think that one through, huh?" Spinel cackled. "I think we're gonna need to do some real work to talk her around."

Just then, White Diamond- who'd recovered from that way quicker than she expected- shot out a hand to try and grab her. The manacle-type chain device whatchamacallit grabbed her arm before she could get too close, but the deafening slam of her hand as it closed made it all too clear that White meant to shatter her on the spot.

"Whoa! We got a live one!" Spinel yelped, backpedalling and putting some distance between her and the angry imprisoned tyrant. (She made sure to spin her legs wildly as she did so, getting another chuckle out of Yellow. Score!)

"Please don't antagonize her, Spinel," Blue pleaded.

"Awww, really? But I kinda _want_ to antagonize her! Since she had me created to be best friends with a jerk who _hated_ me, and then let her abandon me for six thousand years, and then used me as a pawn to get _herself_ back in that jerk's good books! And all that jazz!"

Blue and Yellow looked away uncomfortably. "Ah... well..." Blue started-

She held back a laugh. They looked so _awkward!_ "Yeah, yeah, you guys helped with that and stuff. But it's fine! Water under the bridge! Right? Just as long as I get to crack wise at her a little, right?"

Yellow sighed. "I... suppose. But please- we're trying to get her to accept this new paradigm quietly."

White looked revolted. _"New paradigm?"_

"The _actual_ end of the empire," Blue said, looking forlorn. Spinel wasn't sure if that was because Blue was upset about the end of the empire, or if it was because Blue just always looked forlorn 100% of the time no matter what.

White's jaw dropped, and she seemed to be searching for something to say.

"To put it simply," Yellow said, "we're transitioning away from a model wherein we continue to directly manage our existing holdings, and to a model wherein those holdings are managed... collectively, by representatives of those holdings' interests."

Spinel guffawed. "To _put it simply?!_ C'mon, Yellow! You can do better than that!"

"I don't understand," White said quietly.

"Yeah, duh!" Spinel said. "She's trying to say 'you're not the boss anymore' in fancy-talk."

Huh! She thought White's jaw had dropped earlier, but that had been nothing. There was something to take a note of, there- extremely funny to see the former most powerful being in the universe get more and more flabbergasted.

"You have to understand," Blue pleaded. "We... couldn't keep doing things the way we'd been doing. We... weren't fit to rule."

White snapped something that sounded _almost_ like words- some kind of reflexive objection to what'd been said, except she'd tripped over... something. _Really_ good face there. She'd remember that one for later.

"What we were doing wasn't even the best thing to do by our own standards," Yellow said. "We were... wasting resources. Passing up opportunities to grow. Because..."

Yellow seemed to be having a hard time saying what she was going to say next.

"C'mon, you practiced this!" Spinel whispered, nudging Yellow's ankle.

"Because..."

White was still silent- not transfixed, not waiting on Yellow's words. Just kinda... looking at the floor. Like she didn't even care. What was that all about?

"It's okay, Yellow," Blue said.

"...No," Yellow replied, finally. "No, the speech we practiced... it's not fair. It's self-serving. We're _all_ retiring, because we _all_ made the same mistakes."

Blue looked startled. "It was all on _her_ command, though...!" she whispered.

"And when did we ever seriously try to defy her, Blue?" Yellow snapped. "Not _everything_ we did was out of fear. Steven was right."

Geez, this was getting heavy. She wanted to cut in with a joke, but this seemed like one of those no-jokes times. Instead, she kept an eye on White, who was still staring at the floor.

"Yellow..."

"No, Blue. We're not going to stand here and lecture her. _Look_ at her! Do you think it's going to help, arguing to her face about why what she did was wrong? Do you think that's _ever_ helped?"

Blue took a deep breath. "...Okay. So... now what?"

"We just tell her," Yellow said, closing her eyes. "That's it. She can either accept it, or we bubble her."

White suddenly jerked her head up. _"No."_

Yellow sighed. "Then... White. Without mincing words..."

"Ooh! If we're going off-script, can I do it?" Spinel asked, raising her hand and waving it wildly.

Yellow cracked a reluctant smile. "I... I'm sure it would be _funny,_ but..."

"Great!" Spinel said, jumping up on a table near White's eye level. "So, like they said- you're not the boss anymore! None of you guys are the boss anymore, actually! Because when you guys are the boss, you blow up planets and start wars and really just make a big huge messy garbage pile out of the situation. Apparently that just keeps happening over and over, and someone finally noticed a pattern! Go figure!"

"Can I shatter it?" White asked in a monotone. Yellow shook her head.

"No, yeah! Really! It turns out when you have an intergalactic empire, that's way too big for three people to make _all the decisions_ for! Did you know that space is _big?"_

"I would really like to," White pointed out.

"So we're trying out a bunch of different ideas for how to make decisions about planets and stuff," Spinel continued, ignoring any mortal terror she might be feeling. (Yellow would protect her.) "A bunch of people just said Steven should be in charge, but I pointed out that he was dumb and that idea sucked."

"Spinel," Blue said in a warning tone.

"No, he agreed with me, remember? That one got a lot of laughs until he finally managed to get people to understand he was serious. But for some reason they still made him stick around to 'moderate' the 'discussion' or whatever."

"You hear what she's saying, and yet you allow her to continue speaking," White observed.

"So one idea Steven had was that we try something they did on Earth, because that's what Steven does, is come up with ideas that are just how they do things on Earth. Like... say you have a bunch of laser rifles and you need to decide who gets them, right? Should we send them to Dumb Planet or Stupid Planet? But we don't want some huge monochrome moron deciding it, so we need a different way. Can you guess what Steven's idea was?"

"It dares to-"

"Bzzzzzt! Out of time! Zero points for White Diamond! The answer is- get this- he says _everyone_ would sort of just _say_ whether they think it should be Dumb or Stupid, and then you count up everyone who said Dumb and everyone who said Stupid, and whichever choice had the most 'votes' (that's what they call saying what you want to happen) would be the one they went with. He said that idea is called 'the Mocracy' and that it's how humans make all their choices."

"It's saying horrible things, see?" White said. Yellow rubbed at her temples.

"No, yeah, that's crazy, right? No one would ever get anything done, they'd be too busy doing the Mocracy for every little thing. That's probably why humans didn't invent spaceships, because they were busy counting up votes for whether they should invent spaceships."

"Can you at least make it stop?" White tried.

"Nope!" Spinel answered for her. "Nobody is ever going to make me stop again! So I was saying, the Mocracy sounds like a hassle, but Steven's friend had a twist on the idea! What if instead of _everyone_ doing the Mocracy on _everything,_ you could just have someone else you trusted do your 'voting' for you? And lots of people could give their votes to the same person, so that there'd only have to be a few people who did 'voting', and we could call that 'Repperzendit of the Mocracy'. And Steven seemed kind of confused by that, and tried to say that was already how it worked, or something, but I wasn't paying attention because I had an even better idea."

"You still have a chance to silence it."

"See, if you're _already_ picking a few people who you think want the same stuff you want, and sending them to go 'vote' for things- why bother having the 'vote' part at all? You just have those Repperzendits go and fuse into one big super-Mocracy, and then the super-Mocracy makes all the decisions! Then you don't have to deal with arguing, or the people who lost the 'voting' getting mad that they lost! They'll just come up with the perfect compromise because all the arguing happens automatically in their own head!"

"Have you both forgotten how to destroy a lesser being when it makes objectionable sounds?" White asked. "Tell me you understand why this is completely repugnant."

"So obviously my idea was perfect, because it basically means everyone gets what they want. But someone pointed out that some people aren't gems, and can't fuse, and so that didn't work? But then a Peridot suddenly got all excited and started screaming a bunch of technobabble, and that's when I checked out but I think they basically have an idea to fix that."

"Please," White begged.

"So they're going to do a round of the Mocracy to figure out who should be in the Super-Mocracy and try that out with a few planets, and that's the story of how I invented the best idea and solved the concept of decisions so we didn't have to talk about boring stuff anymore," Spinel said, beaming.

"Thank you," Blue said.

"Killing it, now?" White asked, hopefully.

"Even if I wanted to-" Yellow began-

"She doesn't, bee tee dubs," Spinel cut in-

"-even if I wanted to, I don't have the authority to do so."

"Oh, by all means, you're authorized," White said, smiling one of those smiles that Yellow said had numbers. She didn't know which one this was- they kind of all looked the same to her.

"You don't understand," Yellow said. "You don't have the power to authorize anything."

White's expression didn't change, but her eye twitched a little. "Ah, yes. You believe I am not White Diamond, simply because I have been defeated and imprisoned. An understandable mistake, given how impossible-"

"Spare me."

"-indeed. Then- you have come to believe that I no longer have authority, because you believe you have conducted a successful _usurpation._ In that case, the decision is yours. Please- and I am making a _polite request,_ see- shatter the mentally defective Spinel."

"I will not, nor is the decision mine," Yellow reiterated.

White turned to Blue. "You, then? I can't imagine how _you_ managed to convince Yellow to allow you to-"

Blue gave a pained smile. "Not me, either."

White scowled. "Don't tell me- you're indulging Pink's fantasies again? You can't seriously be telling me _she_ is in charge of-"

Spinel had to blink a little bit, because Blue's eyes were watering up a little.

"Pink is _gone,_ White," Blue said, managing to choke out the whole phrase.

White sighed in exasperation. _"Steven,_ then, if you insist on calling her that. You understand how she's going to get if you continue letting her have her way, right?"

"Hey, get it together!" Spinel said, as Blue's tears splashed to the floor. "I can barely see through this stuff!"

"Steven isn't in charge either," Yellow said, shaking her head.

White's eyes went wide. "What- no. Don't tell me that super-mockery thing-"

"That's a work in progress," Yellow said. "But no. What I'm trying to get across is that _none_ of us are in charge of _anything_ any longer. I _have_ no subordinates."

"Except for me, my Diamond!" Yellow Pearl said, peeking over the containment console."

Yellow grimaced. "Ah- well. We'll talk about that later. The point is-"

Spinel groaned. "Can we quit dancing around it, already? You're taking _forever_ to get to the punchline! I love a good shaggy dog story, but this is getting out of hand!"

"I notice you still haven't killed her yet," White observed.

"Because _technically,_ I outrank her!" Spinel said, cackling as she watched White's expression contort in fury. "Wanna know _why?"_

_"Why_ is it saying these things and still being alive?!"

"It's _because_ all _three_ of you are prisoners! And I'm here supervising you!"

White looked back and forth between Yellow and Blue, blinking expectantly. As if she didn't even need to _ask_ them to correct what Spinel had just said. She was _really_ good at denial.

Yellow looked her dead in the eyes. "We have failed. Again and again, we've ignored our mistakes and refused to take responsibility. To right this, Blue and I are voluntarily consenting to imprisonment for our actions. We were _hoping_ we could convince you to do the same."

"Please," Blue pleaded.

White was quiet for a very long time. It was _really_ difficult not to break the ice for that long.

"...I order you to release me," White said to the Pearl at the console.

"Yes, my Dia- no! No, my Diamond!" the Pearl stammered. "Oh, stars, I can't believe I just...!"

"That won't work," Yellow said. "And... I suppose that's your answer, so... I'm sorry. This was all too much at once."

"We'll let you get some rest," Blue said. "And... I think we might need Steven in here, after all."

"Some rest?" White scoffed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Ooh! That was the perfect setup!

"I'm glad you asked!" Spinel said, quick-drawing a giant destabilizer blaster three times her size and pointing it at White, with one huge finger on the trigger. "It means I shoot you with this!"

"Some time in your gem should do you good," Yellow said sadly.

Looking back, afterwards... she really hadn't actually expected _that_ to be the point where White broke down pleading and begging and surrendering. It was just a destabilizer- it wasn't like they were going to _torture_ her or anything.

Diamonds, Spinel decided, were a bunch of huge weirdos.


	20. Constance Gold

One month later, Constance Gold stepped out of the assembly hall in something of a daze, as a number of similarly-dazed gems and aliens filed out of the building and towards the warping lot outside. 

That had gone... strangely. 

The first meeting of the Galactic Union had taken some work to set up. Connie had been a little out of her depth trying to navigate it all- really, she probably shouldn't have been responsible for organizing something like that. There should have been _adults_ making those kinds of decisions. Interviewing colony planners and compiling lists of sapient species, identifying their representatives, and convincing them to try becoming a gestalt alien superbeing to govern the universe... should have been the job of someone who wasn't sixteen years old. 

(Or at least the job of ultra-famous intergalactic savior and compulsive diplomat Steven Universe, but he was deliberately- and understandably- trying not to involve himself in universe-ruling type stuff.) 

She'd tried to help on the technical side with Peridot, but Peronnie had turned out not to be especially well-suited for the grind of R&D. Experimenting with the underlying principles of fusion had seemed like a fun idea at first, but in practice Peronnie just didn't have the patience to deal with days of failed trials and careful bookkeeping. It wasn't that Connie was _bad_ at that sort of thing, but... as a fusion, her mind ran so fast that everything felt like it was dragging _on_ and _on,_ and unfused she just didn't have the technical background to be any help. 

Yellow Diamond shouldn't have been responsible for organizing it, either. 

She was in prison for war crimes, first and foremost. It wasn't a good look, having the new government organized by an ex-dictator of the empire being replaced. Even letting her out on parole was questionable- her voice of command made her something of a flight risk, theoretically. When a prisoner has the ability to give an irresistible order to their parole officer, the whole thing starts to seem like a farce. 

But ultimately, putting all of this together required getting lots of gems organized and following directions. While the Diamonds were _officially_ out of power, that wasn't the perception among gems. As far as most of their armies cared, there had been some sort of power struggle amongst the Diamonds, and Steven Diamond had come out on top. That didn't mean that when a Diamond ordered you to do something, you didn't _do_ it. It just meant that they weren't, currently, giving orders. 

They'd needed institutional power to get anything done. You didn't just replace the government of an empire spanning multiple galaxies overnight. But the only ones with that institutional power were the Diamonds- in jail- and Steven, who was trying to wash his hands of the whole thing. 

So, a compromise was devised. If you couldn't get people organized without a Diamond, but you couldn't have any of the existing Diamonds do the organizing... 

Well, you made a new one. 

It'd taken some time to get it to work. Yellow had never tried it, before, and it hadn't been something she'd been comfortable with- even if it _had_ been her idea. A parole officer who couldn't be ordered around, because the parole officer was in her own head. 

At first... it hadn't been stable. There wasn't much they had in common, besides a desire to get things done. And while that'd been enough for the fusion that took down White Diamond, that fusion had the advantage of a tense situation where emotions were running high- not to mention participants who'd all fused before. 

So at first, Constance Gold had fallen apart. Couldn't keep it together. A sixteen-year-old human girl with a heroic streak a mile wide, and a millennia-old gem dictator so jaded it was a wonder she wasn't green. Wanting to repair a bureaucracy hadn't been enough to bridge that gap. 

_That,_ though, Steven had been more than willing to help with. 

It had been awkward. There was no way Steven Universe running some kind of weird platonic couple's counseling session between his girlfriend and his deposed dictator sister-aunt wasn't going to be awkward. 

The difficult thing had been... that they didn't actually have a lot of _disagreements_ to resolve. They already had a common goal. There wasn't a conflict, or anything- they just barely knew each other. They were total strangers- the sort of thing Mom would describe as a "coworker relationship", which Connie surmised was sort of like how it was like when you were assigned a group project with classmates. 

So when trying to resolve the conflict failed, Steven had tried to help build a relationship just by getting them to have fun together. And that... had worked. 

Well, no. It'd failed spectacularly, at first. Steven had a whole day planner filled with fun activities, and they _really_ hadn't gone as planned. For... reasons he really should've seen coming. For instance: 

  * Funland, as it happened, had never needed to establish a _maximum_ height for the rides before- something Mr. Smiley corrected in a hurry.
  * Funland _Arcade_ hadn't needed to establish a maximum height either- because the roof of the establishment made it implicit.
  * When Steven brought the DDR machine outside, it had _not_ been crushed to pieces by a giant yellow boot, because Yellow had pointed out the obvious problem before causing property damage.
  * It was extremely hard to play beach volleyball with someone who had to bend over to reach the net, and whose serve sent the ball into orbit half the time.
  * Fish Stew Pizza didn't have a large enough oven to bake something Yellow could even grab with her fingers.

Steven's ideas that _weren't_ totally infeasible if you thought about them for two seconds- those didn't seem to land either. His idea of fun just wasn't _Yellow's_ idea of fun. Yellow... had needed to have the idea of fun explained to her, actually. After careful examination of the concept, Yellow had stated that her idea of fun was conquering things and managing a vast empire of loyal soldiers. 

That was when Steven got huffy, and when Connie had a brainwave and booted up Seb Meyer's Colonization VI on her school laptop. It'd been a risky move, since Mom had forbidden her from installing it there, and she'd needed to connect the display to the drive-in movie projector behind Greg's car wash just so Yellow could see the screen, but... 

Well, roughly eighteen hours later Constance Gold had led Gandhi to a record-breaking military victory on Emperor difficulty, so that had all worked out. 

What _hadn't_ all worked out was the job she then had to do. 

Well, it felt that way, anyway. Considering the size of the task, getting _started_ in under a month had actually been a pretty impressive achievement. 

Constance Gold... knew what she had to do. It was that simple. Everyone around her was confused about what needed to happen, and she just _knew._

It was strange- Yellow had never paid much attention to her people. They followed orders, except when they didn't, and when that happened she'd replace them with someone who did. She hadn't needed to question _what_ people might do on their own, or why. 

Constance Gold had no such luxury. Her job was to shepherd _people,_ individual people with their own wants and needs and dreams, in order to get things done. And what jumped out so clearly was that these _people_ had _no idea_ how to get things done. And while she had some measure of authority, at the end of the day she needed _people_ to do things on their own. They would be running this world soon, not her... so why did they all have to be so _clueless_ about it? 

She needed to whip them into shape, for their own good. 

The first thing she needed to whip people into shape to do... was gathering representatives. 

There were only about a dozen different intelligent species in the Gem empire, which... seemed small, until you considered that these were the dozen species that had not yet been completely exterminated at the time Steven canceled the expansion effort. The turnaround on that was usually only a year or two. So... the list of worlds that _would_ have had a seat at the table, had they not been victims of genocide? Somewhat longer. 

Constance Gold went through an extremely disorienting cycle of guilt, relief, and guilt again, when she considered that her job had been made that much easier by all of the, er, _groundwork_ that had been laid to simplify the process. That was _not_ a pleasant bit of serendipity, and she should _not_ have felt relieved about that. 

So she parleyed with the [indeterminate squeaking]s and the Xorxes and the RooboOBOOboos and the Ssizzassisses, and played charades with the [sideways flailing arm motion]s and the jellyfish-looking things that didn't have a concept of auditory language. There were also the Zadaranglians and the Ariavivdions and Bafourons, who were all suspiciously humanlike- or, suspiciously gem-like, as if there were some sort of carcinization process going on. Hominidization? 

On top of all that, she also needed to gather representatives of the _Gems,_ who outnumbered non-gem life something like a thousand to one. (They _had_ been consuming planets to reproduce for a few hundred millennia.) Proportional representation by population probably wasn't the way to go, but there were enough distinct cultures in the different branches of the defunct gem military that electing a single gem representative probably wasn't sufficient. 

They'd decided to go with half-and-half, for the time being, and had used the Yellow Diamond emergency broadcast system to organize a vote. 

So after all that, leaving out the species who declined to participate in galactic governance, they'd arrived at the assembly hall with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, eight aliens who were also basically Secretary-General equivalents, and also seven Agates and two Emeralds, because that what who gems voted for when they were told they weren't allowed to vote for Diamonds. Some Zircons wouldn't have gone amiss, in her opinion. 

At _that_ point, things had gotten weird. 

The problem wasn't the basic physical feasibility. Conveniently enough, Rose Quartz's bio-fusion ability was contagious. (Not by _design,_ surely? She hadn't known that incorporating her physical form into a biological creature would've made that creature capable of spreading the ability to fuse with other species, had she? Would she have imagined this future, where the lines began to blur? Pink- Rose- hadn't been _that_ forward-thinking.) 

Garnet was there, as a fusion coach, and when asked, she'd only smiled and asked "Who knows?", which struck Gold as... unusual, somehow. Not the response she'd been expecting. Something off about it, somehow. Something Garnet wouldn't normally say. 

Garnet wasn't the only one there as a fusion coach, though. She'd been there to spread the requisite ability to the participants, but there was one other specialist present who had more experience maintaining stable fusions with large numbers of participants. 

Without Fluorite, it probably would've been impossible. _With_ Fluorite, it had only been pandemonium. 

An eighteen-person fusion was unheard-of even amongst gems, unless you counted the Cluster. An eighteen-person fusion where half of the participants were aliens with completely different biologies... that was _really_ pushing it. 

It was a good thing Garnet was there, because while future vision wasn't especially effective at predicting the _actions_ of fusions, it certainly told her enough to know she should line the floor of the assembly hall with loads upon loads of pillows ahead of time. 

Why was that? 

Well, when a fusion broke down, its components were typically ejected more or less randomly from the center of mass. And when a fusion involved eighteen people, it was very very _tall._ And when fragile, carbon-based lifeforms fell a couple dozen meters to the ground, it tended to have adverse health effects. 

Fordite fell apart roughly a hundred times before Fluorite finally got them to stabilize, so the pillows had taken something of a beating. 

And... "stabilize" really hadn't even been the right word. Fordite was able to exist, temporarily, while in a state of careful meditation where they deliberately didn't think about anything. Whenever Gold brought out the agenda and began to ask questions, Fordite inevitably began to spasm and drop components, sometimes splitting in half or in three and beginning to squabble. 

It had taken the better part of a week to get to the point where Fordite could hold it together, routing inner conflict through their own personality instead of letting it tear them apart. When they spoke, they spoke _slowly-_ much slower than even Fluorite, hanging for minutes on each word and often aborting sentences and changing the topic in the middle. 

(An example sentence, runtime 90 minutes: "I think that- this is- what I mean to say is- the real- on reflection, actually- if we take into account- given that- if- now- could you repeat the question?") 

But eventually, Fordite made it through the agenda, pronouncing some very tentative declarations with innumerable caveats and vague phrasing. Gold wasn't sure if Fordite was going to be able to function as a _leader_ just yet, but as a sort of oracle of the will of the people, there was... potential, there, at least. 

Though, of course, once they'd gotten through the agenda Fordite _immediately_ collapsed into their component parts and then collapsed again from exhaustion. 

"Are we... going to have to do that again?" 

Constance Gold looked down at the voice by her ankle. Secretary-General deTroit was stumbling, dazed, towards the same warp pad as her. 

"Um. Well, that was just a test run, so if you'd rather not..." 

deTroit wheezed. "Yeah, I think... I think there's junior secretaries who might have an easier time of it than an old man like me." 

"Tiring?" 

"...That, but... just... hard to wrap my head around _thinking_ like that." 

"Mm." 

The warp pad took them to different destinations. Constance Gold was headed not back to Earth, but to TRAPPIST-1d in the Aquarius sector. 

* * *

She wasn't entirely sure what to expect from the Ultramarine Cathedral. She had Connie's memories of Peronnie's memories of seeing the schematics- but even the parts she could remember had been zoomed way out. Planetary architecture, little in the way of internals. 

She continued not being entirely sure what to expect- for longer than expected. It was only when she noticed that there was solid crystal under her feet that she realized the warp was actually over. 

The chamber she found herself in was enormous, with walls of intricately-carved glowing blue crystal. The effect was shaped to look like the warp space barrier, light emitters positioned to produce an illusion of motion along the walls. The transition had been nearly seamless. 

She stared for a moment, because it was beautiful. Then, she noticed something in the room that wasn't glittering blue. 

"Ah! Greetings! We've been expecting you!" 

Stepping towards her across a glass bridge was a Pearl- the one with the cracked eye, who Steven called "Volleyball" for some reason. (She didn't get it. The cracks on her gem, maybe? They didn't seem to make a pattern like that- where was the name from, then?) 

That Pearl was a component of the fusion Aquamarine, right? What was she doing all alone? 

"It's just you?" she asked. 

"Oh, yes. We're very busy, so I came to greet our visitor while she directed construction on the equatorial span." 

Constance Gold nodded. "Will you be taking me to her, or should I deliver the news now?" 

"Oh, of course we'll be going to meet her," Volleyball said. "I'll be giving you the tour on the way! Surely you didn't think I'd skip such an important step!" 

The tour was something spectacular. Hardly a fraction of a percent of the construction had been completed, but a fraction of a percent of a planet-sized palace was still an incredible undertaking. 

She met a number of Bismuths along the span's supersonic construction tram, mostly Era 2- they'd turned out in droves to make their mark on what was, currently, the largest and only planetary reconfiguration project in the empire. In the... not-empire. Volleyball asked them a number of questions about their progress and noted down the answers on her tablet, as Quartzes of all shapes and sizes helped load and unload construction materials from the tram. 

The palace around the primary northern orbital rail pylon was an elaborate piece of work, the walls of which lazily spun around the rings of floor. Volleyball pointed out Aquamarine's handiwork on the suspension, describing in glowing terms the exact technical details. Constance Gold was _pretty_ sure that was impressive, though it'd been some time since Yellow had bothered with small-picture concerns like these. (And, of course, Connie would have been completely lost.) 

When they reached the forward antechamber for the currently active groundbreaking zone- a striking twist on early-mid Era 2 architecture despite being a temporary installation- she interrupted Volleyball's monologue. 

"I think I should prepare you, you know." 

"...tessellated striations- ah? Prepare me?" 

It had been a little obvious, what with the nonstop tour guide chatter. "You're nervous about what I have to say. About the outcome of the Galactic Union." 

Volleyball laughed nervously. "Nervous? No, of course not, I'm not nervous. Now, look at this-" 

"Steven told me about... what you've been through." 

"Ha ha ha! That Steven! Well, it's all water under the bridge, so take a look here-" 

She took a deep breath. There was some reluctance to interrupt again, some instinctive adherence to human social mores that she _knew_ she was above. Except- no, no she wasn't, there wasn't anything wrong with human social mores. Mostly. Okay, no, there were definitely things wrong with human social mores, but being polite wasn't one of them! 

Except when it was absolutely critical to impolitely force Volleyball to confront something difficult. Right? She couldn't just be nice about this? No, no, keep it together... 

Breathe. 

Breathing was weird. Why did she still have to breathe? _Did_ she still have to breathe? Irrelevant. Volleyball. 

"Volleyball, you need to be prepared so that _she_ can be prepared. I think you know that." 

"Know that? Know what? Oh, don't worry about it. See here-" 

"It's not all good news. She- _you_ haven't been completely absolved. There are going to be consequences." 

Volleyball cringed. "Well- well, of course. Naturally. I don't think we expected any different..." 

Constance shook her head. "No. _You_ didn't expect any different, maybe. But I think _she_ might not be prepared to hear about consequences." 

Volleyball stopped talking. She broke eye contact. 

"You understand the consequences of your actions- her actions, maybe, it's hard to say how responsible you were as a fusion. But, um... it's not really like Aquamarine to think about other people." 

"That's not true!" Volleyball objected. "She- you don't know her, she pays attention to _everything!_ She can be _kind,_ I've seen it!" 

Huh. Unexpected. "Maybe. But... if what Steven told me is true, her kindness... always takes a backseat to herself. I don't think it's going to occur to her that making up for her actions is more important than... all this," she said, gesturing to the shining construction site. 

Volleyball didn't respond for a while. Finally, quietly: "So it's being called off, then." 

"No! No, it's not. It's just being... postponed. Would you still rather we talk about this with her?" 

"...I..." 

"I just... want to make sure she's primed to think about how people feel about her. About what she did. It's going to be difficult for her to make things right, and she needs to understand going in that _making things right_ takes precedence over her plans." 

Volleyball hesitated. "I'll... try. I... you're giving me a lot of credit, you know." 

"Hm?" What did she mean? 

"I'm... you're acting like I... like I completely understand where you're coming from, like of course I know that. But... it's not like those concerns are more important to me than her, any more than they're more important to _her_ than her. I never... fought for Earth, or anything like that." 

...Huh. Well... 

"At first I lived for Pink, and then... then I lived to _survive_ Pink. And then I didn't live at all, for a while, and then... I met Steven, but I didn't live for _him._ And I wasn't sure _what_ I was going to live for, after that, until I met her. And now... now I _do_ have something to live for, and it's _her_ and _her_ dream, _our_ dream..." 

This was... difficult to listen to. How was she supposed to feel about this? This Pearl who'd involuntarily taken a new master, but then... regained her... memories of... but then she voluntarily decided to keep that new master, but then... was that even how it worked? _Was_ it voluntary, or was it brainwashing? This sort of thing didn't happen very often. Was she witnessing some kind of Stockholm Syndrome thing? Was this healthy? Was that even any of her business? 

In retrospect, the whole Pearl thing was... really messed up. She didn't know whether what Volleyball was saying was... heartwarming, or really sad and horrible, or what. It was... probably best to leave it alone for now. 

"But," she continued, "I'll try. I _do_ know what it's like to be a victim. And I think she does, too, sort of. In her own way. And I think she can understand- _we_ can understand- that if things are going to be made right for _her,_ she ought to make things right for others." 

"I... thank you. I appreciate that." 

They continued on, out to the groundbreaking zone. Out on the main platform, a crowd of Lapis Lazulis and Quartzes huddled around something in the center. They approached, and the crowd parted. They saw, pointing a wand at a blueprint on the floor... 

Um. Aquamarine. But like, the little one. 

"Oh- er, hello," Volleyball said, meeting her eyes. 

"Oh! Right, um. You," Aquamarine said. 

There was something uncomfortable between them- certainly it didn't look like Volleyball was excited to see her. What was this all about? 

"Sorry, where's... where's Peridot?" Volleyball tried. 

"We, um. Were too tall for those _stupid_ little tunnels," Aquamarine said. "She went down there to check the alignment on the guiderail herself." 

"You didn't just, um, shapeshift?" Volleyball asked. 

"She, um. She's Era 2, so without help, it's a bit of a sticky wicket," Aquamarine answered. "I mean, I'm sure if we'd put our minds to it, but it was just easier..." 

Wait, had... no, of course, rejuvenated Volleyball had imprinted on the _fusion._ Did that not carry over to Aquamarine Prime? What was _that_ relationship like? Had they even _met_ before? 

"Got it!" a voice called out from below the platform. "Alignment's all set! Some idiot calibrated it to _magnetic_ north instead of _axis_ north." 

"Oh! Well, that was no trouble, then," Aquamarine responded as the Peridot climbed back onto the platform. Volleyball let out a sigh of relief. 

Moments later, Aquamarine- the one who'd headed up that unauthorized invasion of [unintelligible squeaking noise], the Aquamarine and the Peridot- was standing above the blueprints. "Okay, everyone, we're back on! Get back to work! I've got to deal with this Diamond thing!" 

The Lapis Lazulis scattered and disappeared into holes in the ground, and soon there were rumbling noises as they carved through the rock and away into the distance. Once the remaining Quartzes had headed back to their posts, Aquamarine approached Constance Gold. 

"So! You're here to hand down my sentence, then?" she snapped. 

Before Constance could answer, Volleyball- smiling wide- ran into Aquamarine's arms, and in a flash of light a taller and frillier Aquamarine stood before her. 

"I see... what's this about _postponing_ my work, then?" 

Getting something usable out of Fordite had been tricky, with the slow speech and constant starts and stops. They'd needed to describe the situation, first, but that had proven tricky. Trying to get them to process new information for the first time... that tended to send them into a sort of catatonic state, when it didn't break them up entirely. 

The solution they'd attempted there was to first describe Aquamarine's crimes to the _representatives,_ who could process that information themselves. That way, an understanding of the facts would be part of Fordite when she formed. 

There had been some concern about that- didn't that defeat the point? Having everyone come to their own conclusions and then letting those battle it out in Fordite's head- that seemed different from having Fordite make decisions. Constance hadn't totally understood the distinction- something about preventing... individual bias... from creeping in... during the knowledge acquisition phase? There had certainly been a lot of shouting about it, which highlighted a flaw in the scheme: there was as much politicking in the process of _constructing_ a leader as there was in the process of _picking_ a leader. 

Still, they'd devised something of a workaround (forming smaller fusions and briefing those more functional fusions before forming the whole), and Fordite (given the better part of an afternoon) had been able to come to a conclusion on the Aquamarine issue. 

"Understand: your actions can't be completely made right. While the plague you unleashed has been cleaned up, there were irreversible consequences during the course of its spread." 

"What, like horns and splotchy colors?" 

Constance sighed and shook her head. "No. Like deaths." 

Aquamarine looked confused. "That doesn't make sense. The cellular overdrive should've prevented any sort of permanent damage to the hosts, and with photorenewal-" 

"There were millions of humans on that planet, you realize. Even if you designed the process to be nonlethal, you had to have known that any project like that would have _some_ failure rate." 

The look on Aquamarine's face said that she _hadn't_ considered that. It really, truly did not occur to her that something she built could fail. 

"Furthermore," Constance said, checking her tablet, "complications during the transformations were a tiny fraction of the casualties." 

Aquamarine looked briefly relieved for a second, before taking another stab at processing the sentence and flipping to dismay. What, because the failure of her virus hadn't been as bad as... something else that was also her fault? 

"Humans who fell prey to violent actions on the part of plague victims before having a chance to succumb themselves. Victims who were operating heavy machinery when they lost the wherewithal to operate it safely. Confrontations between victims. Survivors retaliating against the infected. Victims causing catastrophic structural damage to buildings. A substantial number of fatal accidents which are unsurprising in the context of several million giant rampaging monsters laying waste to a civilization." 

Aquamarine looked more and more uncomfortable with every line of the list. Clearly she'd been expecting _some_ bad news along these lines, but the extent of it was apparently a pretty big shock. 

"Luckily for you, there were _some_ extenuating circumstances." 

"...How extenuating?" 

"Well, you hadn't been aware of exactly how fragile organic beings were. Had you done this to a planet of gems, you might have expected perhaps dozens of fatalities." 

"Expected- wh- wait, how many fatalities _were_ there?" 

Constance Gold checked her tablet, and winced at the figure. "...About 22 thousand, at last count." 

_"Thousand?!"_

She nodded. "A shockingly low rate, all things considered. The infected victims _were_ extremely durable." 

"Oh, good," Aquamarine quietly croaked out. She was stunned into silence, trying to visualize the numbers. 

"Unfortunately, these things aren't judged by percentages. And while you'd ordinarily fall under the General Gem Amnesty, your legal situation is complicated by the fact that you undertook these actions on your own initiative, rather than as orders from the Diamond Authority." 

"...I see." 

"And lastly... Fordite was divided on whether a certain factor was, er. Inculpatory or extenuating. Since you declined to testify in your own defense." 

Aquamarine looked suspicious. "What factor is that?" 

Constance Gold looked her straight in the eye. "That you did not, for an instant, consider casualties when enacting your plan. Am I wrong?" 

None of the sounds Aquamarine stammered out were _words,_ necessarily. 

"Human lives were immaterial to you except as fodder for psychological warfare against Steven, yes? You made them durable to ensure the effect wouldn't be easily contained, correct? Dozens versus twenty-two thousand, this is the first time you've considered these numbers? Had an impression they might matter?" 

"That's- no, I- I mean, it wasn't supposed to- I didn't- obviously there's- just because- well-" 

"Regardless, you've been sentenced to one million years of community service." 

Aquamarine exploded. 

Not literally, but she did scream "WHAT" very very loudly. 

"More precisely, a figure above one million twelve thousand." 

Another "WHAT", and also a "WHY". 

"If you want the math, it's the number of casualties- we're still trying to nail down an exact figure, but a lower bound of 22,000 and an upper bound around 25,000- multiplied by the average human lifespan minus the average human age. A term of service equivalent to the number of years of human life you're responsible for the loss of." 

"BUT- MY, MY-" she said, wheeling around and gesturing at the construction project. 

"You'll be able to continue work on this after a lesser portion of your sentence has been served," she said. She had to suppress a smile- now wasn't the time for schadenfreude. This was a simple matter of discipline- she'd thank her later. 

"How 'lesser' are we- you can't- I can't-" 

"Don't worry," she continued. "The first stage of your sentence is repairing the material damage to Earth's facilities. All you need to do is repair all of the skyscrapers, vehicles, homes, and landmarks that were damaged as nearly the entire population of the planet went on a destructive rampage." 

Aquamarine's mouth flapped open and shut and no sound came out. 

"Once that's done, you'll have recurring free periods of 1070 dubnium-261 half-lives per 3200 dubnium-261 half-life period, which you'll be able to spend on personal projects between your community service duties." 

"What- 1070 per- a third..." 

"Luckily for you, humans spend one third of their lifespans unconscious, and it was deemed unfair to bill you for that time." 

"G-gehhh...?" 

"I trust there are no objections to this arrangement?" 

Aquamarine's face twisted up in consternation, her eyes going every which way. "I have... a _considerable number_ of objections to..." 

"Excellent. We'll have you assigned a parole officer within a week, and you can voice your objections to her then." 

Then she turned and walked away, and allowed the smile onto her face. 

* * *

"I'm impressed," Yellow Diamond said. "You took well to a position of authority." 

Connie, sitting on the ground, held her head in her hands as Steven put a blanket around her. She directed a thousand-yard stare at her feet. 

"Connie, are you okay? Talk to me!" 

Yellow waved a hand. "Oh, she's fine," she said. "I suspect she's simply readjusting to inhabiting a limited organic mind." 

"What _happened,_ Yellow?!" Steven demanded. 

"never again," Connie whispered. 

"What happened?" Yellow asked. "Well, we did an excellent job, I should think. I admit, I was iffy on the idea at first, but Constance displayed an admirable ability to suppress sentimentality in order to make responsible decisions. And I can't _entirely_ attribute that to my own influence." 

"can't," Connie replied. 

Steven pointed an accusing finger at Yellow. "What did you _do?!"_

Yellow raised her hands in mock surrender. Or, well, actual surrender. She _was_ cuffed. "Nothing! Well, a great number of things, I suppose. Dealt with a whirlwind of tasks pertaining to affairs of state, with remarkable efficiency and insight. I have to compliment you on your choice of partner- she's more capable than I'd imagined." 

"Yeah, well, she's on the floor mumbling to herself now," Steven pointed out. "Did you make her do something she didn't want to?" 

"Not at all," Yellow said. "Self-assurance tempered by that human sense for others' emotions, in order to effectively deal with rambunctious personnel. She did everything right. Tough but fair." 

Steven was suddenly spun around as Connie, eyes wide, grabbed him by the shoulders and stared into his eyes. 

_"I turned into my MOM, Steven,"_ Connie hissed. 

"Wait, what?" Steven asked. "Like- literally? 'Cause that's more the sort of thing _I'd_ worry about happ-" 

_"Steven we were just like her and I didn't even care,"_ she said. "It's inside me, all I needed was a little push to fall into it, _I'm like my mom, Steven!"_

Steven looked a little relieved and a little confused. "Well, uh, okay. We can- we can talk about that. Um, how does that make you feel?" 

_"STEVEN,"_


	21. One More Fight

Jane looked in the mirror. 

Well, that was what it was like, anyway. It was a little different, since her reflection was all gray and had that little bindi thing on its forehead. 

"...Um, hello," she said, giving her reflection a little wave. 

"...Um, hello," her reflection said, giving her a little wave. 

She turned to look at the test administrator. "So, what do I do now? Did it work?" 

"So, what do I do now? Did it work?" her reflection said, turning to look at the test administrator. 

From behind the tinted window, the test administrator gave her a thumbs up. That wasn't very helpful. 

"So, um... what's your name?" she asked her reflection. 

"So, um, what's your name?" 

Okay. Of course. Just like the clone arc in Koala Princess, actually. How had Koala handled _her_ doppelgänger? By... well, no, they'd just eaten a big pile of eucalyptus leaves together, which wasn't too relevant to her situation. 

The administrator was making some kind of motion behind the window, but she didn't really understand the gesture. Instead, she just offered a hand to shake. 

"I'm Jane," she said. Her monochrome reflection would probably say-- 

"I'm Jane," her reflection said, and shook her hand. 

Wait, that was weird. If it was just blindly mimicking, how did it know to do that? Shouldn't it have used its other hand, and sort of bonked against her own? 

The administrator appeared to be jumping up and down in excitement. 

Jane frowned and looked over at the window. "Ronaldo- or, um, whoever you are- are you going to tell me what this is about?" she asked, and then so did her reflection. 

In response, music began playing. This was... wait, she knew this one. It was from the salon ballroom scene from the third episode of the Pretty Hairstylist anime, right? That was one of her favorites. When she'd seen Hasamiko-chan and Mizukami-senpai's first dance as a kid, she'd always wanted to dance with that kind of perfect rhythm. 

So... he was asking her to dance... with her reflection? 

Well, hey. Maybe that would work. She didn't know how that was supposed to help with Ronaldo's _research,_ but she could certainly try some dance moves. She'd memorized the whole routine. 

Left foot, turn, right foot- and her reflection, holding her hand, followed. Right step, turn, left back. And those were... _definitely_ Mizukami-senpai's moves it was doing, right? She'd taken Hasamiko-chan's role in the dance, but her reflection seemed to know it as well as she did. 

She twirled, and she leaned back, and her reflection wasn't just her reflection anymore. It- she- caught her, just like Mizukami-senpai, and as the music swelled she was lifted up into the air and spun around. Exactly like how she'd imagined- exactly how she'd have done it, exactly the way she'd practiced the steps. It was like she was reading her mind- was she, maybe? 

Was that what this was? Ronaldo had spent all those days working with that gem girl... not because he was drifting away, but because he was working on _this?_ _Building..._ some kind of magic dance partner, so she could dance the way she'd always imagined? 

That was... a _really_ thoughtful anniversary gift, actually! 

As the music came to a climax, she pulled back, dipping into the final pose from the end of the dance. The final step- she'd done it _perfectly!_ It was one of the most satisfying moments of her life, and... 

...the doppelgänger's bindi began to glow, and then suddenly there was a flash of light and she was gone. 

She heard a muffled "YES!" from behind the glass. That... had that been supposed to happen? Was it a single-use dance partner? What had... _happened,_ there? 

Also, was it just her, or was the room slightly smaller?

* * *

Connie knocked on the lighthouse door. Peridot had said to meet her there- apparently, there'd been some kind of breakthrough? She'd finally figured it out? A solution, after countless gem-hours of research? 

She... kind of had no idea what she was talking about. A solution to _what?_

The door was answered by... not Peridot. It was, um... she looked familiar, actually. Kind of like the clerk at the ticket counter from the movie theater, except over six feet tall and obviously a gem. 

"Oh- hi. You're Connie?" she asked. 

"That's me," she said, wearing a nervous grin. "I, uh... Peridot wanted to see me?" 

"Peridot?" she asked, looking confused. "Oh- you mean- um, the little green one, right?" 

Connie nodded. "She... didn't tell you her name?" 

"Not really," she said. "I mean, she didn't stick around for very long. But, um, come on in. I'll take you to... her." 

"That's a really suspicious series of things you just said," Connie observed. "She didn't stick around very long, but she's here?" 

The girl laughed. "Oh, yeah, haha... I mean, I don't really know how the terminology works, you know?" 

"The... terminology?" 

Her question was interrupted by something crashing into the room. Something large and green, covered in camo print, with a tangled mess of bushy yellow hair bursting out from underneath a visored helmet. Brandishing a glowing katana, the figure got to their feet and... posed dramatically. 

"Behold, Connie... for I have at long last become... the _Deathslayer,"_ they said. Their camo-print cape billowed in the nonexistent wind. 

She... had to take a moment to process what she was seeing. That... could only be... 

_"Ronaldo?!"_

The gem girl laughed. "Oh my god, how are you _this_ cool?" she asked. 

That was not the question Connie would've asked! That was not at _all_ the question Connie would have asked! 

The question Connie asked was instead "Wh- Peri- naldo- why- who- Deathslayer- what?!?" 

The Deathslayer gave Connie an annoyed look. _"Ugh,_ did you already forget? One crisis completely made you lose track of the other, bigger crisis?" 

Oh, for crying out loud. Which one of Ronaldo's crises had Peridot gotten suckered into? "What, the crisis of the snake people living among us? Or the crisis of the amphibianoids controlling people's bodies? Or the crisis of the Great Diamond Authority coming to hollow out the earth? Because Steven already handled that one." 

The ticket-seller-lookalike gem gave the Deathslayer a look. "Wait, amphibianoids? You never told me about that one..." 

The Deathslayer waved a hand dismissively. "The amphibianoids turned out to just be an aquatic op of the larger sneople conspiracy- that's not a separate thing. And while the ongoing Snerson Subterfuge _is_ a deeply important issue, there's one catastrophe which is a much more pressing short-term threat. The sneople, for all their corrupt dealings and hunger for power, are at least interested in maintaining order. We can count on them not to make overtly destructive moves this soon." 

"Rrrright," Connie said. She'd kind of hoped Peridot's influence would've... given them a little perspective, but... 

"No- I'm talking about a crisis whose death toll is already in the hundreds of thousands. Aquamarine thought _she_ was a threat to humanity- but she only killed, what, ten thousand people?" 

Connie's hand went to her sword. "Wait, what? What's happening? Hundreds of thousands of people died?!" 

"Just _today,"_ the Deathslayer nodded. "Even more will die tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that... if we don't _do_ something!" 

"Is... wait. Is... this a real thing? You're going to need to give me some details, because, um... sorry, Ronaldo? Peridot? I... don't know if I can call you the Deathslayer with a straight face." 

"Perinaldo will suffice." 

"Right. Perinaldo," Connie began. How could she put this? She'd expect _Peridot_ to be able to understand that Ronaldo was kind of a wackjob and his portents of doom were somewhere between overblown and outright false- but obviously Ronaldo was constitutionally incapable of figuring that out. Who was Perinaldo? And how could she voice her concerns... like, in a _nice_ way? 

"Yes?" 

"What... exactly... is, um, happening? And what's... your evidence that it's happening? Can you explain?" 

"Thousands upon thousands of people are dying every day." 

Deep breath. "Becaaaause...?" 

"I don't know! Apparently it just _happens!_ I don't know why I didn't notice before, but there's _got_ to be some kind of conspiracy behind human bodies just _mysteriously failing to work_ after a while. It doesn't make any _sense_ that it happens on its own." 

"Wait- _this_ again?" 

Perinaldo struck a dramatic pose which was probably supposed to be intimidating or something. "Yes, _this again._ It's not even just the _blood_ thing- the human body is riddled with inefficiencies and deathtraps that urgently need repair. And _I've_ finally found a way to do it!" 

Connie gave Perinaldo a skeptical look. "To fix... the entire human body." 

"Well, for now, anyway. _Proper_ reengineering of the species is obviously going to be a long-term project, but I've developed a stopgap measure that ought to at least stop the ongoing catastrophe long enough for a more permanent solution." 

She took a deep breath. "So what you're saying is... you, by yourself, solved... the entirety of medicine." 

"Not by _myself,"_ Perinaldo corrected her. "I had the assistance of my Ohime-sama here." They gestured to the movie theater girl. 

"Um, right," Connie said. "Hi, um..." 

"Jane," the gem said. 

"...Jane?" 

"That's, uh, my name!" Jane said, looking a little nervous. 

"Huh. You know, Jane is actually a human name, too," Connie said. What kind of gem _was_ this 'Jane'? Perinaldo called her "ohime-sama", so presumably she was in some kind of position of authority. Did gems _have_ royalty apart from the Diamonds? 

Jane laughed nervously. "Well, um, I know that. Because I'm human." 

Connie's eyes went wide, and she looked at Perinaldo, who was wearing a huge smug grin. If she put two and two together... 

"You- you _turned someone into a gem?!"_

Perinaldo shook their head. "Come _on,_ Connie! You're quicker on the uptake than this, right? Obviously I didn't _turn her into a gem._ That's impossible. Probably." 

"Then- then what- how did- what's...?" 

Perinaldo clicked their sword out of their sheath, and for an instant, time seemed to stop. 

With a whoosh, their camo-print cape flew into the air and hovered there, the reverse side featuring a glossy white surface. They attached some kind of... marker nib thingy, or something, to the tip of their katana, and began slashing furiously at the cape. Steel flashed, ink flew, oras orad, and a wave of overflowing aura nearly knocked Connie off her feet. 

"Hyaaaaaaaah...! Secret Technique: Eightfold Blade Wall of Revelation! Kakugo wo kimero, Kōni-san!" 

When the dust settled, the hovering whiteboard-cape was festooned with colored diagrams, explanatory text, and a web of arrows connecting everything together. She glanced over at Jane, whose eyes were sparkling with awe. 

Connie took a deep breath. This... this was _very silly,_ and it was _not_ the coolest thing ever, and she _wasn't_ jealous. 

"So... this is...?" 

Perinaldo harrumphed. "If you'd use your _eyes_ to observe the Eightfold Blade Wall of Revelation, you'd understand that since the organic fusion patch can be applied to a miniature field assistant injector's schema, it's possible to create new gems to spec with the modifications already built in." 

"Wait, wait... I'm lost on some of this termin-" 

"And _with_ the field assistant injector, it's possible to instantiate Seed Crystals- raw gems with no programming which learn by mimicry- with a Hematite core pattern for the minor telepathy needed to jumpstart the process." 

"Hang on, Peri-" 

"Oh, don't worry about the materials! Peridot had some core samples shipped from Homeworld storage, we're not using _Earth_ for these. There's enough on-call gem fabrication storage to cover getting these set up for one planet's population, it's no problem." 

"That wasn't what I-" 

"Simply put, by exposing a freshly-grown Seed Crystal to an organic being before giving it any orders or training, it'll naturally mimic that being and fill out its personality with the Hematite core telepathy, essentially duplicating the organic. Then, with the Rose patch applied, the clone-gem can fuse with the subject and enhance it with Gem physical form regulation, preserving the original identity while preventing the breakdown of organic processes in the event of something like a deoxygenation event or cellular-" 

"Perinaldo!!" 

_"What?"_

"Just! Give me a minute to... _read_ the _thing!"_

* * *

Gems hadn't invented textbooks. You were either born knowing everything you needed to know to do your job, or your superior would tell you what to do. If you _really_ needed to write something down, there _was_ a written language, but it was mostly used for labeling things or recording data. Using written word to _communicate new concepts_ was apparently unnecessary for such an advanced civilization. Gems favored direct video communication over anything as inelegant as _writing._

That meant that Peridot- Perinaldo- had been sort of _bad_ at communicating exactly what they were doing in writing. It was all nigh-indecipherable shorthand, a pile of data that probably made perfect sense to _them._ It took a lot of questioning to get a sense for all the terms they were using. Every few words, Connie would need to ask them to clarify some technical term or bit of background knowledge. 

Perinaldo got impatient with that pretty quickly- and eventually, Ronaldo popped out and went upstairs with Jane to go watch anime or something. That left Peridot, who was a little bit better at explaining things, oddly enough. Perinaldo had a half-human perspective, so she'd thought they'd be better at bridging the gap in their understanding, but... Ronaldo had this sort of sense that complicated, unusual new ideas ought to be as obvious to _him_ as they were to everyone else, and didn't have much patience for skepticism. With Peridot... Connie still had to ask a lot of questions, but _she_ was clearly _excited_ every time she got to explain something new. 

Eventually... 

"So, your solution to people dying is... making gem clones of people, and then having them fuse with their clones." 

Peridot beamed. "Exactly! It's brilliant!" 

"And you... don't see any problem with that?" 

She shrugged. "I mean, like I said, it's a stopgap measure. If someone gets hurt badly enough, they'll unfuse, and if the situation stays dangerous they might lose their blood while unfused. Obviously we want to do something about that." 

"That's... not what I meant." 

"Well, what _do_ you mean?" 

Did Peridot... really not see an issue? "You, um... don't see how that's like... creating new life, to serve a single purpose for one person...? Like a tool?" 

Peridot gave her a funny look. "Yyyyyes? That... is... what I'm... doing?" 

Wh- then- what- 

"Oh! Wait!" Peridot said, suddenly realizing. "That's _weird_ for humans! That's not how humans are normally born!" 

_"Yes._

She nodded and looked at her tablet. "Yes, right, freedom and stuff. Right to self-determination, or whatever. That makes sense, I guess. Since it's humans that're going to be using these support clones, we'll have to contend with human weirdness about how creating new people works." 

Connie threw her hands up. "It's not just _human weirdness!_ It's just... wrong!" 

Peridot looked up from her tablet. "How do you figure?" 

"How do I- I mean, what if they decide they don't want to just... be someone's other half? What if they want to do something else, but they're trapped?" 

"Uh, they won't?" Peridot said, confused. "They mimic the host and then fuse almost right away after that. They won't have independent existences long enough to... feel trapped or whatever." 

"And what if the mimicry doesn't work right? What if the fusion isn't stable? What if there's long-term health effects? What if they don't _want_ to fuse?" 

"Failures are failures," Peridot said. "I guess if a Seed Crytal _really_ doesn't want to fuse, even though she's existed for all of a minute and hasn't figured out what wanting things is yet, she can go off and... do whatever?" 

Connie folded her arms. "Do whatever?" 

"Look, I don't know! I haven't worked out every single little kink in the process yet!" Peridot said, throwing up her hands. 

"That's exactly the problem!" Connie said. "You're just going ahead and doing this, without worrying about all the... the ethical complications!" 

"You want to talk about ethical complications?!" Peridot cried. "I looked it up- _93%_ of all humans who've _ever existed_ are gone because of this! Every second we spend arguing over this stuff, another human shatters! This is a _ridiculous catastrophe!"_

"You can't just play that card so you don't have to-" 

"Whoops, there goes a human! And another human! One more human! Every second wasted- human! Gone!" 

Connie sighed. "Peridot, humans have been dealing with this for thousands of years. We don't need to rush into this. We'll be _fine."_

"The human who just got shattered isn't going to be fine," Peridot scowled. "Neither is that one. Or that one!" 

She was... wrong. She had to be wrong. Sure, _technically_ she was right, but... this was crazy. You couldn't just _think_ like that. 

"You can't go ahead and... do things like this without thinking it through, just because people are dying. If you rush into crazy solutions like this, you might make things worse!" 

Peridot didn't look impressed. "Worse than thousands of people dying? How's _that_ work?" 

"I don't _know!_ You won't know until it goes wrong! You need to stop and think about what you're doing before you just blindly do whatever seems like it might help!" 

Peridot wasn't looking her in the eye anymore. 

...Was she... wait. This was familiar, somehow. Why was this... familiar? She felt like she'd had this argument before. 

Hadn't there been an argument... where one side had wanted to do something risky, cool, and heroic... but the other side thought that it was too dangerous? Not even because she really understood the risks, but because she thought someone needed to be the responsible grownup? Hadn't she had that argument a _billion times?_

Hadn't she said _never again?_

But- but what Peridot wanted to do was crazy. She didn't know _what_ was going to go wrong, but so much could go wrong! There were real problems, real dangers! She wasn't just playing a role, here! 

..._Mom_ probably didn't think she was just playing a role, either. 

No, this was stupid! There had to be some solution, here. Some way to be responsible without falling into Mom Mode again and shutting things down. It... really _would_ be good, if Peridot didn't mess it up. 

Peridot spoke. "If you're so worried about me rushing into things... how about you help out?" 

Huh? 

"I'll admit I could use some extra time to think things through," Peridot said. "And I value your perspective. We don't need to _fight_ about this. You see what I'm saying?" 

...Right. This wasn't a fight someone needed to _win._ They needed to work together. 

"You're saying Peronnie could help?" 

"If she's got time, sure," Peridot said. 

She... was supposed to be applying for colleges, but... well. Probably wouldn't hurt her chances to take a semester off to add more "saving the human race" to her extracurriculars. 

She extended a hand, but then... 

"Wait." 

"Are you in, or not?" 

"Let me call my mom first." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as "Peronnie and Priyanka run some kind of crazy biomedical tech startup" is a fun premise, I think this is where _this_ story comes to an end. Thanks for reading!


End file.
